Xref: utzoo rec.arts.startrek:15153 sci.space.shuttle:1583
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!gatech!rayssd!gmp
From: gmp@rayssd.ray.com (Gregory M. Paris)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Enterprise "Space" Shuttle
Summary: Revisionist history?
Keywords: naming, profit, bull
Message-ID: <4167@rayssd.ray.com>
Date: 9 Oct 88 22:29:28 GMT
Sender: gmp@rayssd.ray.com (Gregory M. Paris @ Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI)
Reply-To: gmp@rayssd.RAY.COM (Paris)
Followup-To: rec.arts.startrek
Organization: Raytheon Submarine Sandwich Division
Lines: 19


In the recent Star Trek special that included "The Cage" Patrick Stewart talks
about NASA's Enterprise shuttle (I hesitate to call it a space shuttle since
it never went into space) and how it got its name.  He says that NASA bent to
the pressure of a large number (400,000?) of Star Trek fan letters demanding
that the shuttle be named Enterprise.  Yet, I seem to remember that at the
time of the vehicle's test flights, NASA said it was named Enterprise to
indicate that the shuttle program was going to be a money-making program; the
spirit of enterprise being the spirit of profit.  Of course, now we know that
was a bunch of baloney, so has NASA conveniently revised history to claim
their motivation was Star Trek?

[Followups have been directed to rec.arts.startrek.]

-- 
Greg Paris                    <gmp@rayssd.ray.com>
{decuac,gatech,necntc,sun,uiucdcs,ukma}!rayssd!gmp

I must be here sleepwalking, mustn't I?