These are the voyages of the space shuttle Enterprise, boldly renamed by former President Gerald Ford after a large letter-writing marketing campaign from Star Trek fans.
In 1974, building of the world’s first space shuttle, recognized then as Orbital Vehicle-101 (OV-101), started at Rockwell Corporation’s plant in Downey, California. (The metropolis, situated in Los Angeles County, is understood to quick meals fans as the dwelling to the oldest working McDonald’s and the birthplace of Taco Bell.) With the debut of the spacecraft set for 1976, it was rechristened the Constitution in honor of the U.S. bicentennial.
But, as Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, joked at a ceremony for the shuttle many years later, “Star Trek fans can be very persuasive.”
Richard Nixon’s Prime Directive: Don’t Blow the Budget
In 1972, the Apollo program was coming to an finish. If John F. Kennedy impressed the nation together with his name to “go to the moon” and “do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” Richard Nixon’s rhetoric was much less hovering.
“The space shuttle will give us routine access to space by sharply reducing costs in dollars and preparation time,” he stated, as reported at the time by Popular Science. In the wake of the moon landings, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine had grand visions for America’s space program. He proposed sending males to Mars in nuclear-powered spacecraft, constructing space stations and bases alongside the method, in line with the The Space Shuttle Decision by T.A. Heppenheimer.
Alas, interplanetary journey was not in the stars. When Robert Mayo, Nixon’s price range director, lower $1 billion from NASA’s price range, Paine centered on a much less formidable half of his proposal: a reusable shuttle. Even that venture was almost axed by Congress for budgetary causes, Heppenheimer wrote. Once NASA discovered supporters in the Department of Defense, nonetheless, the space shuttle program was on strong floor. The first shuttle, the Enterprise, would solely be used for testing. It was the second, the Columbia, that had the honor of being the first space shuttle to launch into orbit. It blasted off on April 12, 1981, precisely twenty years after Yuri Gagarin turned the first particular person in space.
The Enterprise by no means traveled amongst the stars. But it paved the method for future space shuttles, which might spend 30 years ferrying astronauts and provides into space, deploying satellites, and finally making the International Space Station a actuality.
Star Trek Lives Long and Prospers
Nixon introduced the space shuttle program in 1972, the similar yr that the first Star Trek conference was held in New York City. Four years earlier, the present survived a brush with demise after fan letters satisfied NBC executives to resume the present for a 3rd season. But in 1969, the similar yr that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the present was canceled. Its 79 episodes, nonetheless, would stay on in syndication. When President Gerald Ford took accountability for the space shuttle program after Nixon left workplace, he found how passionate Star Trek fans might be.
In a now declassified memo, Ford’s advisors requested the president for approval to vary the name of the Constitution to the Enterprise. “NASA has received hundreds of thousands of letters from the space-oriented ‘Star Trek’ group asking that the name ‘Enterprise’ be given to the craft,” wrote William Gorog, noting that use “of the name would provide a substantial human interest appeal to the rollout ceremonies scheduled for this month in California.”
Jim Cannon, one other presidential advisor and later Ford’s biographer, liked the thought. “It would be personally gratifying to several million followers of the television show ‘Star Trek’, one of the most dedicated constituencies in the country,” he wrote.
Not everybody was on board. Advisor Bob Hartmann famous that Enterprise was an “especially hallowed Naval name” and he thought the “Navy should keep it.” Another advisor, Jack Marsh, stated he accepted of the name itself however didn’t recognize it being chosen as a result of of a “T.V. fad.”
Ford selected to embrace Star Trek fandom. When the Enterprise rolled out of its hangar in 1976, an Air Force band performed the Star Trek theme. Nimoy was there, together with a number of of his castmates, together with Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. The ship would take its maiden voyage in Earth’s ambiance in 1977, two years earlier than the franchise was revived on the massive display screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Today, fans can go to the real-life Enterprise on the deck of the USS Intrepid, half of the Intrepid Museum in New York City and a testomony to the energy of Trekkies in America.
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