The Local Group Fighting to Keep Virginia’s Space Shuttle

On their first date, Joe Stief and his now wife, Jess, talked about aerospace. They still discuss the topic every day. Though Stief is a healthcare investor and Jess a US Space Force officer, the couple often joke that he’s actually the bigger space nerd. It was his idea for them to get married in front of the space shuttle Discovery in the hangar of the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly. Last year, they had the ceremony at Discovery’s nose and the party in the back, with the DJ booth set up directly under the engines. The event was “out of this world,” says Stief, who grew up visiting the National Air and Space Museum and has been into space ever since.

This past spring, Stief was dismayed to learn that some Republicans in Congress are trying to move Discovery from its current home in Virginia to Houston; a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed in July, funds the relocation. Stief decided to push back. He created a grassroots group called KeepTheShuttle.org and spent a long weekend building a website, hoping to interest like-minded shuttle nuts in the cause. “My first instinct was there are folks on Reddit that are going to care about this,” Stief says. Since then, he’s spent hundreds of hours organizing meetings with elected officials, writing press releases, and reaching out to fellow space buffs. Stief jokes that he’s worried about the kind of precedent this would set, because so many of the items on display at various Smithsonian museums have strong associations with other places. “It’s ultimately bigger than the shuttle,” he says. “North Carolina could come in and say, ‘We want the Wright Flyer back,’ or Kansas could come and say, ‘Hey, those ruby slippers from Dorothy—we want them back.’ ” Not to mention that the space shuttles were actually all launched from Florida.

The effort to move Discovery to a museum at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is being led by Texas senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Cornyn, after earlier failing to secure a floor vote on a standalone bill to relocate the shuttle, tacked an $85 million rider onto the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian says it owns Discovery and will not be moving it to Houston. The budget bill allocates funds to pay for such a relocation but doesn’t have the power to mandate it, so for now the shuttle seems likely to stay where it is. (You can have your wedding in front of it, too, if you’re so inclined: The Udvar-Hazy Center hosts more than 80 events a year.)

Stief plans to continue his efforts, and concerned shuttle-philes are still connecting with him and the group via the website. He’s now printed a batch of T-shirts featuring a cheeky logo that’s a deliberate parody of the come and take it flag flown by Texan rebels. “We’ve already been engaging with some allies on Capitol Hill,” Stief says. “There’s been no shortage of senators and [members of Congress] that have publicly condemned the move.” He’s also gotten supportive messages from a number of veteran NASA employees, including some who worked on shuttle missions. “I appreciate the political support,” he says. “But as a space nerd, when you hear from long-term NASA engineers, that really makes your day.”