Enterprise Coming To Earth

NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101 was named the Enterprise by President Gerald Ford in response to a letter campaign by Trekkies seeking honor for mankind's first space ship. STAR TREK fans should have been more patient, because the Enterprise was an experimental craft designed without engines or a thermal heat shield for testing in the atmosphere. After completion of these trials the Enterprise was stripped of all vital equipment. It never touched the sky. In 1983 I was standing by the Seine by the Tullieries in Paris. Upon hearing the roar of a low-flying jet I looked up and spotted a NASA 747 piggybacking the decommissioned test shuttle. The French authorities had refused NASA a fly-over on the way to the Air Show at Le Bourget., but the pilot must have executed one and as a Trekkie my heart soared with pride. "We are going to the stars." I was ignorant of the Enterprise's flightlessness and remained bliss until reading about the test space shuttle in the morning Times, which announced that the Enterprise would be flying atop a 747 this morning. I checked the clock on the Williamsburg Bank. 11:01. The fly-by was scheduled for 11:05. I shouted down to AP. My landlord and I scrambled to the roof of his Fort Greene brownstone. We are kids at heart. I had binoculars. He was holding a camera with a long lens. The sky was clear and helicopters flittered to the west. "They have to be following its flight." I agreed with his hunch. Sadly our azimuth was too low to allow a sighting of the Enterprise's passage. "I think it's gone." "Yes, but it will be transported to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum by barge some time in the summer. "We could bicycle over to Battery Park." "It's only 15 minutes away." Via the Brooklyn Bridge. We high-fived each other like 12 year-olds. NASA might have abandoned the stars, but we never will. Live long and prosper.