Last year, we taught you exactly how to steal the Space Shuttle should you find yourself inclined to do so. But a recent development at NASA has made it so that theft may not be necessary — now, you can just straight up buy their stuff if you want it.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA is taking a page out of your local shady furniture store's playbook and is holding a going-out-of-business sale for items used in the now-retired Space Shuttle program. NASA is now looking to lease or sell outright some of the facilities and equipment used at the Kennedy Space Center.
Among them, according to the Sentinel, are a 15,000-foot landing strip, a parachute-packing plant, several aerospace tracking antennas, a facility once used to assemble Saturn V-Apollo rockets, and a freaking launchpad. There's also space in the garages where shuttles were once maintained, a hangar and its test equipment, and various other buildings.
And like any good fire sale, this stuff is going fast:
"We have a lot of things in discussion, realizing that these major facilities have been funded by the space-shuttle program," said Joyce Riquelme, NASA's director of KSC planning and development. "And the facilities out here can't be in an abandoned state for long before they become unusable. So we're in a big push over the next few months to either have agreements for these facilities or not."
It's hard to imagine who will buy this stuff since it's so purpose-built. Space Florida, "the state's public-private space agency" (insert your joke about a Florida space program here), has put in bids for some of it, the newspaper says. Boeing has leased one of the shuttle garages. But some of it may not attract interest from anyone, NASA fears.
Come to think of it, you know who would buy this stuff? Lucius Fox, that's who. And we all know what he would end up doing with it.
What NASA swag would you like to own?
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