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yipes! — thanks, John! … you are correct and I have corrected the mistake. Appreciate it!

Correct — there appeared to be much elbowing between NASA and the Smithsonian who argued that their Shuttle should be complete and therefore available in coming years for those who might wish (or need) to study a complete Shuttle that flew it space.

That went on for awhile, and then one day I was invited to come over to Kennedy “and watch the engines be put back in Discovery.” Hmmm, I said — looks like the Smithsonian won.

But no — in the end NASA kept the real engines and sent them (or may still be in the process of shipping them) to Alabama for storage.

And so, Mr. Smith is correct: — a conglomeration of used and spare parts were put on the Discovery. Nonetheless, Discovery will have more of the original engine pieces than likely Endeavour, Enterprise or Atlantis will when they head for their museums.

As for the actual Shuttle engines? — they will spend the coming years in storage at Stennis in Alabama. Plans are to use them only once more on Orion and then discard them in the ocean. But, as with everything regarding government and NASA, that may change as time goes on and NASA’s plans are revised.

Two more RSSMEs can be seen behind Bob Petrie in the photo whose caption begins “One of two SSME Leads is…”

Enterprise was planned to be refitted for orbital flight, but after design changes made following the early construction of Columbia, it was determined to be cheaper and easier to modify the structural test article, STA-099, for orbital flight, becoming Challenger (OV-099).

Enterprise is the only shuttle to have been fully stacked at both KSC and Vandenberg and is the only shuttle to have traveled overseas, to Paris for the 1983 Paris Air Show.