I was driving through Hagerstown the other day when I happened to notice the license plate of the car in front of me. Evidently the person was from Texas. At least their car was. It was a white plate with a tiny cowboy riding a horse. The was some oil derricks and some sage brush. In the top right corner was a crescent moon. What got my attention what was featured in the top left corner.
It was the Space Shuttle.
What did the state of Texas have to do with the Space Shuttle? It doesn’t launch from there. It launches from Florida. It doesn’t land there either, even though that is what it is shown doing on the Texas plate. It’s coming in for a landing. It lands in either Florida or California. Once it landed in New Mexico.
It was not built in Texas. I happen to know for a fact that every Space Shuttle ever built was constructed in Palmdale, California. I know this because I grew up only a few miles from the actual plant where every Shuttle was built. They were built by Californians, not Texans.
As a kid growing up, I took great pride in the Space Shuttle. I guess I still do. It bothers me to see that Texas asserting some sort of ownership on something they have nothing to do with. Something like the Space Shuttle.
well, the space shuttle Columbia DID disintgrate over Texas, so i guess even NASA can’t mess with Texas
ok no, if it’s a new thing on their plates, then it may be a gaudy tribute to the Columbia crew, and the fact they were flying in a 22 year old spacecraft, you’d think a new fleet of shuttles would be in service by now, but i guess science takes a back seat to ummm other things
I think it actually disintegrated in the upper atmosphere. I don’t know if that is considered Texas airspace.
Who can’t mess with Texas? Everyone that has ever messed with Texas has walked away the winner. Texas sucks.
Houston, we have a problem.
NASA Mission Control is in Houston.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Control_Center
Then why show the actual Space Shuttle? If that it was they are trying to convey, they should show a bank of computer monitors with a bunch of geeky guys looking at them. The actual Space Shuttle has NEVER been in Texas. They still put it on their license plate.
One could argue that the Space Shuttle is in the sky, not in Texas.
Perhaps the guy on his horse is on his way to work at Mission Control.
Yeah, but it’s coming in for a landing. Something it only does in California and Florida and once in New Mexico.
Everything’s bigger in Texas…including the Space Shuttle.
Another sad irony about the shuttle on the Texas license plate is that most people in Texas probably couldn’t care less about it. And the last President from Texas who even pretended to give a fuck about the space program was Lyndon Johnson. God knows neither Bush has done shit for NASA.
–Steve
Bush isn’t really from Texas. He’s from Connecticut. He just pretends to be a Texan on TV.
Whoa, what with the hostility? Do recall that the space shuttle wouldn’t get very far without the Johnson Space Center in constant communication with it. Texas is a huge part of the NASA space program - in Clear Lake is the training facility for astronauts.
So, yeah, we can put a space shuttle on our plates all we like, we’re just as heavily involved with NASA as any other state, and more than most. Would you have preferred they put a Saturn V rocket on there?
No, I would recommend to the state of Texas to only put stuff on their plates that actually have something to do with their state instead of sponging off on the achievements of other states.
The space shuttle wasn’t built in Texas.
It has never launched from Texas.
It has never landed in Texas.
If you want to bring attention to the Johnson Space Center, show a guy sitting in a chair staring at a monitor while he eats a donut.
There are plenty of other things Texans could have on their plates: an illegal crossing the Rio Grande, the Alamo, or just a bloody ‘coonskin cap.