Bjo Comments on Final Flight of Enterprise

Leonard Nimoy welcomed the shuttle Enterprise to Kennedy Airport in New York last month, symbolizing Star Trek’s shared history with America’s first space shuttle.

He and the rest of the cast had attended the shuttle’s roll-out 35 years earlier — because a letter-writing campaign spearheaded by Bjo Trimble influenced President Gerald Ford to name the first shuttle after the starship on Star Trek (itself named by Roddenberry after the famous U.S. Navy carrier).

Bjo and John Trimble went to the 1976 roll-out, too, so I naturally wondered what they were thinking as everything came full-circle. Bjo answers —  

It does seem like a blink since we worked on it, though revisionist history now says we had nothing to do with it, and several others are claiming they did it all alone. Yeah….

It was with a sort of nostalgic sigh that John and I sat down to watch the Enterprise being delivered to New York. We could wish that it had been brought out here, but at least it didn’t end up in a space junk-pile, as so many of our past space vehicles have done.

Well, maybe not a junk-pile, but it’s heart-rending to see that big ol’ Saturn 5 laying on the Johnson Space Center’s lawn, just being a big bird’s nest!

At least the Enterprise will be set up for people to wonder at it, and enjoy it. That is important to us.

One thought on “Bjo Comments on Final Flight of Enterprise

  1. I must be out of touch with certain fannish circles I used to be plugged into, because I’ve never heard anybody try to take credit for the Trimble’s letter writing campaign, or deny their involvement.

    I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but it never reached my eyes or ears.

    John and Bjo have done huge amounts of work in promoting STAR TREK in many ways, and that anyone would disparage or belittle their contributions is unacceptable — if it weren’t for them, the entire franchise would have died with the second season of the original program in 1968, and Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone, and Les Moonves would be a lot less richer then they are, having made millions of dollars off of other people’s work without themselves doing one damned thing for the franchise.

Comments are closed.