NASA attempts to sell or lease shuttle facilities

Los Angeles Times : By the end of this year, a number of facilities associated with NASA’s space shuttle will lose their federal funding. If the buildings and machinery are not maintained, they will quickly deteriorate in Cape Canaveral’s marshy coastal environment. To avoid that outcome, NASA is attempting to lease or sell them. Some of the facilities are well known: Launchpad 39A, where many shuttles took off; the Vehicle Assembly Building, which was also used for the assembly of Saturn V rockets; and the Orbiter Processing Facilities, which served as the shuttles’ hangars. The sale and leasing process has been kept mostly secret so that bidders can make proposals without their competitors or the public seeing them. Joyce Riquelme, NASA’s director of planning and development, expects the first deals to be made in the next six months.