Red Giant


 

 

.

This short extract from NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America by Constance Penley (Verso 1997) describes NASA's 'increasing symbolic merging with its hugely popular fictional twin, Star Trek' to 'form a powerful cultural icon, that I call NASA/TREK' (p.16)

The book also looks at popular science as a utopian rewriting of space that 'proposes that scientific experimentation be accompanied by social and sexual experimentation'. In this context, Constance Penley discusses the phenomenom of 'slasher' fiction, the self-published rewriting of Star Trek as gay pornography by (mainly) women fans.

 

NASA/TREK (extract) - Constance Penley (1997)

... less noted than the extent to which vignettes of Star Trek pervade our everyday lives is the way that NASA and Star Trek have merged. For one thing, people who work for NASA are about as Trekked-out as people anywhere, perhaps in part because Trek lore and language lends itself well to a work culture devoted to the science and technology of space exploration. Mission Control computers have been called Scotty and Uhura and the shuttle's on-board computer is named-what else? - Spock. The working name of the proposed sequel to the Hubble Space Telescope is "Space Telescope Next Generation". And many of the astronauts have been vocal about the inspiration they received from Star Trek. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, says that it was Nichelle Nichols in her role as Lt. Uhura, the African communications officer on board the Enterprise, who made her first want to go into space.

But at an even more fundamental institutional level, NASA has deliberately participated in making itself over as Star Trek, or at least has welcomed internal and external pressure to do so. NASA first began its Star Trek makeover in the mid-seventies when the space agency yielded to President Gerald Ford's demand (prompted by a Star Trek fan letter-writing campaign) to change the name of the first shuttle from Constitution to Enterprise. Many of the show's cast members were there as the Enterprise - an experimental model used only to practice takeoff and landing - was rolled out onto the tarmac at Edwards Air Force Base to the stirring sounds of Alexander Courage's theme from Star Trek.

After Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, NASA let an unnamed shuttle astronaut carry his ashes - classified as "personal effects" - into space. And NASA actually hired Nichelle Nichols at one point in the late seventies to help recruit women and minorities into the astronaut corps. Mae Jemison later invited Nichols to her launch and began every shift of her shuttle mission with Lt. Uhura's famous line, "Hailing frequencies open.' Even the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, which produces and houses the historical record of U.S. space flight, has made a point of including Star Trek. In March 1992 the museum mounted Star Trek: The Exhibition, a show that turned out to be wildly popular (big surprise). In response to the question of what a pop-culture phenomenon like Star Trek was doing in a place that honors real-life conquests of air and space, the curator said, simply, 'There is no other fantasy more pervasive in the conceptualization of space flight than Star Trek. ' One might conclude from these examples that Star Trek is the theory, NASA the practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


do you want to comment on this? - visit the Red Giant Guestbook

return to Red Giant index