The first Space Shuttle was originally going to be named Constitution. US President Gerald Ford agreed to rename it Enterprise – here’s how Star Trek fans persuaded him.
It’s 17 September 1976. The world’s press has gathered in Palmdale, California, for the revealing of Nasa’s first Space Shuttle vehicle: The Enterprise. But it wasn’t always supposed to have that name.
It was a huge day for Nasa and for the US administration, as they began a new adventure in space travel. After the Moon landings, the Space Shuttle would be Nasa’s project to make spaceflight routine, affordable and accessible for the future.
In the audience were presidential aides, Nasa officials, astronauts and some very special guests. Many of the cast and crew members of TV science fiction series Star Trek also came along to watch the vehicle be unveiled.
It was also quite the day for the show’s fans. The US president and Nasa agreed to dedicate and name the first Space Shuttle after the flagship of Star Trek’s fleet, the Star Ship Enterprise.
“Nasa has received hundreds of thousands of letters from the space-orientated Star Trek group, asking that the name be given to the craft,” said government aide William Gorog, in a now declassified memo to the then President, Gerald Ford.
Fans bombarded Nasa and the White House with letters about why the ship should be renamed. And it was not the first time Star Trek fans had run a campaign like this, either.
The mastermind behind the campaign was among those watching the unveiling at Palmdale. Her name is Betty Jo Trimble, otherwise known to Star Trek fans as Bjo Trimble. She has become something of an icon in the science fiction world.
Bjo became famous for her fashion shows at the World Science Fiction Convention, which was an early form of Comicon. Her fashion shows would give fans a glimpse of all kinds of outfits from the sci-fi world. But, one day, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, got in touch with her. He wanted to use the fashion shows to promote some early Star Trek costumes.
Trimble became a close friend of the show. She was invited on to set to meet the actors. She got to know Rodenberry personally. She ran her own fanzine. They would even become a crew member, when they appeared in an unnamed role in the Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. But Bjo is most famous for running the successful Save Star Trek campaign, with her husband John Trimble, which stopped NBC from cancelling the show after its first two seasons. The campaign has become one of the most famous in TV history.
The Space Shuttle was a challenge that had never before been undertaken by a space programme. The idea was to create a vehicle that could leave the Earth like a rocket but then land after its mission was completed like a plane.
The challenge was famously laid down to Nasa’s engineers at a meeting on April Fool’s Day 1969 where Max Faget, an eccentric mechanical engineer who could always be found wearing his famous bowtie, strode into the room, pulled a balsa wood model of a “funny looking” plane from a bag and flew it across the room. Faget was the designer behind the Mercury spacecraft, and later the Apollo and Gemini aircraft for Nasa, and would play a vital part in the design of the new shuttle as engineers tried to figure out how to build the vehicle within Nasa’s budget. Palmdale in California was the centre of the aeronautics industry. One of the biggest companies there was Rockwell International, which had built aircraft like the successful B-1 bomber, which is still in service today. Rockwell were offered the contract to the build this prototype. In 1974, construction began and two years later, the Shuttle was finally ready to be unveiled. (BBC)
How the Space Shuttles were given better names
