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The Enterprise reloaded
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The Enterprise reloaded Mick O’Hare beams up for the birthday voyage of the iconic starship
In fact, those old cornerstone caches were votive offerings, not meant to be discovered. In contrast to his enthusiasm for SF, Gleick finds a time capsule “a tragicomic time machine”, moving through time at a rate of one second per second. Few capsules survive, he notes, and why should the future care about us in the first place? But here Gleick neglects the wisdom of his book, forgetting that time travel is experienced in the traveller’s present. Time machines are instruments for exploring the past and future, to augment our current knowledge or enrich our lived experience. Placing items in a time capsule is an opportunity for self-appraisal. Considering how we would like to be perceived by the future is a way of examining what we most cherish. n Jonathon Keats’s latest book is You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the future (Oxford University Press)
“THERE are hull breaches on decks 4, 5 and 11, Captain, the starboard nacelle is ruptured along its length, and the bridge has taken a devil of a pounding!” Those lines could come from any episode in any Star Trek series, as a stricken USS Enterprise fights destruction. Except the nacelle is venting wood chips, not plasma. And it’s not phaser damage – it’s paint peeling from the saucer section. That’s because this Enterprise is a 3.5-metre long, 90-kilogram model built 50 years ago for the original series of Star Trek. In an age when computer-generated imagery is synonymous with science fiction, this spaceship is rather quaintly made of wood. “That was pretty much it,” says Margaret Weitekamp, lead space curator and cultural historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall
mostly hanging up. This took its toll on a model built for a studio: it started to sag. The engine pods spread apart, the nacelles tipped backward under their own weight, and paint cracked as wood expanded and contracted with heat and moisture.
in Washington DC. “That and plexiglass, vacuformed plastic and a good paint job. If you wanted a spaceship on TV, you had to build it and film it.” The Enterprise, designed by second world war pilot Matt Jefferies, broke SF rules, with “no flying saucers, no pointy rockets,” says Weitekamp.“He used ‘aircraft logic’: what do the parts do? These are engines, this is the bridge... it has to seem like you’ve thought through what it would require.” The model’s bridge was on top of the saucer with its curved corridors, engineering was beneath, between the engines. Jefferies left another legacy: Jefferies tubes. These connecting tunnels in the engineering system allowed crew to crawl through the ship’s innards and make vital repairs or hide from invading Romulans. Over the years, the museum has shown the spaceship periodically,
Up close and worried
Planet of the giants: why is the USS Enterprise smaller than a car?
National Air and Space Museum Collection
Star Trek starship Enterprise, exhibition, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
Restoring the original (built by modeller Richard Dayton) worried Weitekamp: “When you got up close, you saw all the flaws where they hammered in plexiglass. Some bits were burned, some unfinished and unpolished.” The model was repaired within two years, in time for the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek on 8 September. Weitekamp stopped worrying: “We’ve done so much,” she says. The new version also updates the lights with LEDs. And painters who worked on the Star Trek franchise, John Goodson, Bill George and Kim Smith, add their own value. “Goodson is fascinated by burn marks, by char, by rust. He transfers that appearance of wear and tear to models.” Tellingly, the Enterprise is the only fictional artefact in the hall, something Weitekamp is very conscious about. She wanted “a nod” to SF, especially to Star Trek and the Trekkie phenomenon, which drove fan conventions, Klingon language and culture, film reinventions – and more. This plays to two of the museum’s big themes: imagination and inspiration. “Star Trek inspired today’s astronauts as Flash Gordon inspired Apollo astronauts,” says Weitekamp. Art imitates life imitates space travel. Engage… n 10 September 2016 | NewScientist | 43
The Enterprise reloaded Mick O’Hare beams up for the birthday voyage of the iconic starship
In fact, those old cornerstone caches were votive offerings, not meant to be discovered. In contrast to his enthusiasm for SF, Gleick finds a time capsule “a tragicomic time machine”, moving through time at a rate of one second per second. Few capsules survive, he notes, and why should the future care about us in the first place? But here Gleick neglects the wisdom of his book, forgetting that time travel is experienced in the traveller’s present. Time machines are instruments for exploring the past and future, to augment our current knowledge or enrich our lived experience. Placing items in a time capsule is an opportunity for self-appraisal. Considering how we would like to be perceived by the future is a way of examining what we most cherish. n Jonathon Keats’s latest book is You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the future (Oxford University Press)
“THERE are hull breaches on decks 4, 5 and 11, Captain, the starboard nacelle is ruptured along its length, and the bridge has taken a devil of a pounding!” Those lines could come from any episode in any Star Trek series, as a stricken USS Enterprise fights destruction. Except the nacelle is venting wood chips, not plasma. And it’s not phaser damage – it’s paint peeling from the saucer section. That’s because this Enterprise is a 3.5-metre long, 90-kilogram model built 50 years ago for the original series of Star Trek. In an age when computer-generated imagery is synonymous with science fiction, this spaceship is rather quaintly made of wood. “That was pretty much it,” says Margaret Weitekamp, lead space curator and cultural historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall
mostly hanging up. This took its toll on a model built for a studio: it started to sag. The engine pods spread apart, the nacelles tipped backward under their own weight, and paint cracked as wood expanded and contracted with heat and moisture.
in Washington DC. “That and plexiglass, vacuformed plastic and a good paint job. If you wanted a spaceship on TV, you had to build it and film it.” The Enterprise, designed by second world war pilot Matt Jefferies, broke SF rules, with “no flying saucers, no pointy rockets,” says Weitekamp.“He used ‘aircraft logic’: what do the parts do? These are engines, this is the bridge... it has to seem like you’ve thought through what it would require.” The model’s bridge was on top of the saucer with its curved corridors, engineering was beneath, between the engines. Jefferies left another legacy: Jefferies tubes. These connecting tunnels in the engineering system allowed crew to crawl through the ship’s innards and make vital repairs or hide from invading Romulans. Over the years, the museum has shown the spaceship periodically,
Up close and worried
Planet of the giants: why is the USS Enterprise smaller than a car?
National Air and Space Museum Collection
Star Trek starship Enterprise, exhibition, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
Restoring the original (built by modeller Richard Dayton) worried Weitekamp: “When you got up close, you saw all the flaws where they hammered in plexiglass. Some bits were burned, some unfinished and unpolished.” The model was repaired within two years, in time for the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek on 8 September. Weitekamp stopped worrying: “We’ve done so much,” she says. The new version also updates the lights with LEDs. And painters who worked on the Star Trek franchise, John Goodson, Bill George and Kim Smith, add their own value. “Goodson is fascinated by burn marks, by char, by rust. He transfers that appearance of wear and tear to models.” Tellingly, the Enterprise is the only fictional artefact in the hall, something Weitekamp is very conscious about. She wanted “a nod” to SF, especially to Star Trek and the Trekkie phenomenon, which drove fan conventions, Klingon language and culture, film reinventions – and more. This plays to two of the museum’s big themes: imagination and inspiration. “Star Trek inspired today’s astronauts as Flash Gordon inspired Apollo astronauts,” says Weitekamp. Art imitates life imitates space travel. Engage… n 10 September 2016 | NewScientist | 43