Starship Enterprise

Star Ship Enterprise

This is a drawing of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek The Next Generation.  Well, it is MY version of the ship.  It is not exact so maybe it is a later version of the Enterprise.  In Star Trek the original series the ship had the code NCC 1701.   In Star Trek The Next Generation it was
NCC 1701 D.  So maybe this is NCC 1701 F or NCC 1701 G .   

I think that Star Trek was and is an amazing franchise.  It featured humans from many races as crew members and as officers.  It had aliens who also were crew members and everyone was viewed as equals.  I read that Nichelle Nichols who played Lt. Uhura wanted to quit but Martin Luther King Jr. talked he out of it.  He said that Star Trek was the only show he let his kids stay up late to watch.  He told Nichelle that it featured her as Uhura who was black and an officer.  She was an important role model.  Whoopi Goldberg, who later would be on Star Trek TNG...was a little girl when she saw Lt. Uhura on Star Trek.  She ran to her mom saying, "Mamma Mamma, there is a black woman on TV and she aint no maid!" 

One of the amazing things about Star Trek is how it predicted some technologies.  Captain Kirk sings off on a tablet computer.  Captain Picard reads novels on a tablet as well.  Those scenes were shot many years before a tablet  computer existed.  Now with talking computer access like Siri and Alexa we live in a world that connects us to the computer in one way you could communicate with the computer on Federation Starships...by talking to it and it talking back to you.  Also, some of the first cell phones were designed by Star Trek fan engineers.  They insisted on a cell phone design that flipped open like a communicator from the original Star Trek series. 

The two smaller engine like things that you see on the Star Ships from the Star Trek series are Warp Nacelles or the warp engines.  The theory...that IS something scientists are working on....is that if you can warp space in front of you you can travel faster than light.  This has also been referred to as folding space in the Dune series of books.  Maybe one day we WILL be able to travel at warp speed.  Right now if you accelerated to just under the speed of light in an interstellar ship and went to the nearest star other than the sun.  By the time you got back 80 years would have gone by.  The crew of the ship would only have aged 5 or 6 years because of how time slows down when you are traveling fast like that.  With warp drive you could travel that distance in a few hours instead of 80 years. 

Star Trek also has a message of unity.  The people of Earth learn to get along.  People are still proud of their culture they were raised in, but they are not bigoted.  Of course in  Star Trek some species from other planets are bigoted against species from different planets.  But the message is bigotry is wrong. 

Technology is used for  good much of the time in Star Trek.  Of course often they are fighting against those who want to use tech for bad purposes.