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raised platform at the front of the vehicle allows guests to come nose-to-nose with the Enterprise, as well as look into its crew cabin's windows and down the length of the 122 foot (37 meter) prototype spacecraft

During the opening ceremony, Marenoff-Zausner, together with Mosler and Fisher, presented the Enterprise veterans with plaques commemorating that their names would be displayed alongside the shuttle in the form of star-shaped displays

Also on hand

Karol "Bo" Bobko, who served as prime chase plane pilot for Enterprise's approach and landing test (ALT) program

The entire Intrepid team is working hard to raise the funds and develop a plan for the permanent home for Enterprise, on the grounds of this museum but not on the flight deck

pressurized enclosure extends over Enterprise's tail, which tops out at 57 feet (17 meters) high, and beyond the shuttle's 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan. It occupies the rear of the Intrepid's flight deck with the shuttle's nose pointed out toward the Hudson River

display is set to open to the public on July 19

visitors the chance to closely view and circle around the prototype winged orbiter

The location for the permanent Enterprise exhibit is still to be decided. Intrepid officials told collectSPACE that they are considering locations across the street from where the aircraft carrier is docked and also alongside the museum on the pier.

Planetary Resources is still years away from actually snatching up an asteroid and staking a cosmic claim

What the study did was show that, for the first time in history, this was now feasible using technology available in this decade

it appears feasible to identify, capture and return close to Earth an entire asteroid that is roughly 23 feet (7 meters) wide. This so-called near-Earth asteroid (NEA) would weigh in the neighborhood of 500 tons

According to the study

Placing a 500-ton asteroid in high lunar orbit would provide a unique, meaningful and affordable destination for astronaut crews in the next decade

This disruptive capability would have a positive impact on a wide range of the nation’s human space exploration interests. It would provide a high-value target in cislunar space that would require a human presence to take full advantage of this new resource.

Such a venture represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system.

Water or other material extracted from a captured volatile-rich near-Earth asteroid could be used to provide affordable spacecraft shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport a shielded habitat.

This undertaking could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization industry. The availability of a multi-hundred-ton asteroid in lunar orbit could also stimulate the expansion of international cooperation in space as agencies come together to determine how to sample and process raw material from an asteroid.

may someday have to deflect a much larger near-Earth object

the idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over 100 years.

the feasibility of this retrieval concept is made possible by three key developments.

Firstly, the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for mining.

Secondly, there is evolving ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid.

Lastly, the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s both enables exploration and exploitation of the returned near-Earth asteroid.

NASA's findings are put in the public domain, as in the earlier cases of communication, weather and navigation satellites, for use by competing commercial enterprises

companies can then work to generate revenues — and pay taxes — while lowering the cost of access to resources for the good of all

stopped at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to shoot prototype shuttle Enterprise before it was moved to New York City

we had written the Chasing Atlantis Twitter account and site URL on our cars

A NASA software engineer, Ryan Horan, saw our car with Paul shooting out the window as we passed by the sign for the Kennedy Space Center. He was interested in our project and sent us a tweet.

arranged

to join one of the first tours following the reopening of the Vehicle Assembly Building to the public.

The building is monstrously huge. It will generate its own weather system inside, sometimes producing micro-rain clouds.

The film was completely self-funded

posting an Indie-Go-Go or Kickstarter profile up in hopes of helping to cover the post-production costs