By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — New York is feeling the heat from Houston over its bid to get one of three retired space shuttles from NASA later this month.
Evelyn Husband Thompson, whose husband Richard Husband died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, said the rightful resting place for the shuttles is Houston, not New York.
"You don't have the astronauts, we do," Thompson told the New York Daily News.
The Houston advocate went on to say that New York hosting a space shuttle "would be like us doing a tribute to Broadway," according to the paper.
The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Hell's Kitchen began lobbying for one of the retired vessels — the Discovery, Endeavour or Atlantis — last April when a gaggle of space suit-clad enthusiasts rallied on the subway shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central Terminal.
Since then, more than 150,000 people have signed an online petition to bring one of the shuttles to the Intrepid, arguing that the New York museum would allow for the greatest number of people to enjoy the attraction.
Nearly one million people visit the Intrepid each year, according to the museum's website.
The Smithsonian, Cape Canaveral, Fla. and Dayton, Ohio, the home state of astronaut John Glenn, are also reportedly hoping to land one of the space shuttles, which would cost an estimated $40 million to transport and preserve.
NASA will announce its decision on the shuttles on April 12.
