Posted on 04/19/2018 4:57:16 PM PDT by Twotone
Those who can remember a half century back will recall these words, spoken by Captain James Kirk of the starship Enterprise at the beginning of each episode of Star Trek:
“Space—the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission—to explore strange new worlds—to seek out new life and new civilizations—to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Although the original series lasted only three years and 79 episodes, it spawned follow-on series and has become a cult classic.
But this essay is not about classic science fiction, the starship Enterprise, or Captain Kirk. Yet it is about science that has some of the elements of science fiction. It is about a starship going where no man has gone before. And it is about Captain Kirk, played by Canadian actor William Shatner. Yes, Shatner is still alive at almost 88 and promoting the latest NASA spacecraft mission to touch a star.
That star is our Sun and the mission is called the “Parker Solar Probe.” At the size of a small automobile, the unmanned probe is hardly a giant starship. But it will have to endure heat and radiation greater than any encountered by the Enterprise. Although hardly traveling at “warp speed,” it will reach almost half a million miles per hour as it swings around the Sun in flybys that get ever deeper into the solar corona. That is where the Sun accelerates the ‘solar wind’ to supersonic speed and embeds intense solar magnetic fields into a giant spiral that sweeps galactic cosmic rays out of the solar system.
(Excerpt) Read more at nw-connection.com ...
http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/
James Tiberius Kirk would bend over anything in the universe.
Is there any way we can put Lindsay Graham and Susanne Colins on it?
Not another Stormy Daniels post.
Darn! I thought we were going to be discussing some guy that wanted to do Ellen DeGeneres.
I really liked Star Trek when it first came on. Still do like it but viewing it recently I was surprised how many weak episodes there are.
There are some excellent ones too but I think the main reason it continues to be popular is the characters. All the actors are, or were good.
BTW, they dropped the “man” and replaced it with “one” in the later ripoffs.
Ever notice that in the Star Trek series everyone was a officer.And there were only two enlisted rank Yeoman Brand and Chief O Brien.
“If you want your name to go up in space, you have until April 27th to add it to the list.”
My son had a good friend who was into astronomy, and we had good conversations about it. Very bright kid. He was killed in a car accident after leaving our house late one night. We put his name on the disc they put on the Mars Maven probe. There was a certificate you could download and print out once submitted, which we gave to his mother. I’m glad they do these type of things.
~W
Interesting.
It happens I was wondering about that ‘bridge’ on the Enterprise, and where it was and stuff...
Yep.due to political correctness, they changed it to “where no one has gone before”. We have to be inclusive and don’t want females to have hurt self esteem .
Kirk’s approach to space exploration was to seduce beautiful women on every planet.
And on the ship.
But only women. We now know why Sulu was there.
Was Nurse Chapel an officer?
Did they ever even say?
Yes, she was an officer. She became a doctor by the first film.
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