USCHOLD@RUTGERS@sri-unix (06/10/82)
I attended a talk by James Doohan (Scottie) at SUNY Binghamton 5 or 6 years ago. One of the questions he received from the audience was about the name of the first shuttle. He just chuckled and said "Yes, the tremendous letter-writing campaign has indeed resulted in the renaming of the first shuttle to the ENTERPRISE. It's too bad that it's never going to make it to space." A rather unfortunate irony. Would've been nice if someone used their brain and make this publicly known. I'm sure all the TREKies would have been more than satisfied to have the name "ENTERPRISE" attached to the first shuttle in -space-, instead of the first -shuttle-. I got a more detailed explanation about the ENTERPRISE when visiting the Johnson Space Center last Thanksgiving. It was indeed a prototype shuttle, adequate for aerodynamic testing, but that's about all. A number of major design changes occurred during and shortly after it was assembled. It turned out that it would have been more expensive to modify it to make it spaceworthy than to build a new one. Also, you get to have a display model... Mike -------
REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix (06/11/82)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM at MIT-MC> I'm not sad that we don't have a flying shuttle named "Enterprise". After all, the USS Enterprise was a starship, not a shuttle. If any name from Startrek should be used for a shuttle, it should be "Galileo", not "Enterprise". Unfortunately that name is going to be used for something else. Maybe we'll name our first space station "Tribble" or something else related (did the space station on Startrek have a name?), and our first interstellar craft "Enterprise"?