Anticipating Space Shuttle's Arrival, Old Warplanes Ship Out A British Royal Navy fighter-bomber known as a Supermarine Scimitar F1 was among three aircraft lifted by crane over the side of the aircraft carrier Intrepid on Wednesday. On the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, sacrifices had to be made. So, on Wednesday morning, three vintage warplanes were trussed up and hoisted over the port side of the ship for a barge ride up the Hudson River to a museum near Schenectady, N.Y. They had to go to make way for the new star attraction: Enterprise, the prototype for the space shuttles that is due to arrive in New York City next week. Enterprise, which the federal government awarded last year to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan, is not scheduled to reach the ship for several weeks, but its move began commanding attention on Tuesday when the shuttle Discovery rode on top of a 747 jet from Florida to Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Discovery will displace Enterprise at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum near Dulles on Thursday. After posing Enterprise nose to nose with Discovery, a crew employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will lift the prototype onto the same, specially equipped 747 over the weekend. Then, the jet will ferry Enterprise to Kennedy International Airport on Monday morning, slowing along the way for a low-altitude tour of the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks. And so for the first time, a space shuttle will land in the city. That is, if the weather cooperates. On the sunbathed deck of Intrepid on Wednesday, much of the talk was about the forecast for untimely rain on Monday. "We've had a month of great weather," said Susan Marenoff-Zausner, the museum president, as she apprehensively scanned the sky. If Monday is too inclement, NASA officials may decide to postpone Enterprise's final flight, she said. As she spoke, workers guided a Douglas F3D-2 Skyknight, its black wings folded up to reveal the stars and stripes on their undersides, down to the pier below. The Skyknight, which did most of its fighting in the dark in the 1950s, took its place beside two foreign planes that were also being jettisoned: a British Royal Navy fighter-bomber known as a Supermarine Scimitar F1 and a Soviet-designed Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-15. Soon, the crane would move them onto an adjacent barge that resembled a floating Dumpster for the trip north to the Empire State Aerosciences Museum in Glenville, N.Y. Ms. Marenoff-Zausner said the decision to give up the planes was "bittersweet" because it would help Intrepid accommodate Enterprise, which the museum's directors hope will be a big draw. "With Enterprise coming, we had to make deck space," said Eric Boehm, the museum's curator of aviation and aircraft restoration. And the only way to make deck space was to move three airplanes off. It's hard to see them go, but it's for the greater good. We're going to get Enterprise. The museum will need to attract a big crowd to help offset the costs of transporting the shuttle from Dulles. The bill for the move, which the museum had to pay in advance, came to $9.6 million, said Matt Woods, the museum's senior vice president for facilities and engineering. Now, Mr. Woods's staff must erect an all-weather tent, 56 feet tall, on the aft of the flight deck. They have begun reinforcing the steel deck to hold the Enterprise, which Mr. Woods says weighs about 75 tons. Already, a red outline of the shuttle's distinctive shape is painted there, the nose aimed at the commuter ferry terminal in Weehawken on the New Jersey side of the river. To get Enterprise there from the airport in Queens will be a trial of its own. First, the cranes and stabilizers being used at Dulles to take Discovery off the 747 and put Enterprise on it must be dismantled and trucked to Kennedy. In the meantime, Enterprise will remain mated to the jet in a tent at the airport. In all, it will take about six weeks to get the shuttle off the plane and onto a barge. After a slow tug through Jamaica Bay, under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, through New York Harbor and up the Hudson to Pier 86, a floating crane with a 190-foot boom will hoist Enterprise onto the flight deck, Mr. Woods said. Once the shuttle is in place, Mr. Woods said, the tent - similar to the bubbles that cover some tennis courts - will be raised over it. By July, he said, the museum hopes to start selling tickets for entry into an exhibit designed around Enterprise that will cost about $3 million to build. Then, the serious fund-raising will begin. Later this year, Ms. Marenoff-Zausner said, Intrepid will start collecting donations toward a permanent structure, possibly a museum across the West Side Highway from the carrier with Enterprise as its centerpiece. "Ultimately," she said, "we want to be able to create a permanent home for it." Noah Rosenberg contributed reporting.