WASHINGTON - New York City's odds of snagging a retired NASA space shuttle for the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum just got way longer in an uphill fight with Texas.

Don't-mess-with-Texas types are set to take over key House committees with huge sway over NASA's budget, and they've made clear where they want any or all of the three retiring shuttles - Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour - to go.

"East Texas, West Texas, Northeast Texas and even the 4th District of Texas, even the Panhandle, would make excellent homes for the orbiter fleet," said 87-year-old Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Tex.), the oldest member of Congress.

Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) said, "It should come as no surprise to anyone that I believe the people of Houston in particular have earned the right to house one of the orbiters, and every member of the Texas congressional delegation agrees with me."

Hall and Olson made the arguments in September, when they teamed up with the powerful Florida delegation in trying to muscle New York out of the bidding.

The main competition to the Intrepid came from the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but more than 15 other museums nationwide also have put in bids.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space museum in Washington is considered a lock for one of the ships, leaving the other locales to battle it out for the other two.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) shoehorned language into a recent NASA bill to keep the Intrepid in the bidding, but Hall and Olson will have more heft in the new Congress that starts in January.

Hall will take over as chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, while Olson takes the reins of the space subcommittee.

Gillibrand isn't giving up without a fight.

"With all due respect, real geographic diversity requires NASA to look beyond the Texas border" to find homes for the shuttles, the senator said.

"More than 50 million people each year would have the chance to see the shuttle in New York City, making the Big Apple the best choice," Gillibrand added.

More than 155,000 visitors to the Intrepid have signed petitions asking NASA for a shuttle to grace the flight deck of the decommissioned aircraft carrier floating off the West Side. The museum has begun raising money for the $28.8 million NASA wants to transport the orbiter.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a retired Marine general and astronaut, initially set April 2011 as the date for deciding where the shuttles will spend retirement. But delays in the remaining two shuttle flights could push back Bolden's ruling.