NYNY 2019: Enterprise.

Birthday card courtesy of Cloin, the pretty Campbell brother - who
is, in fact, even older than I am.

It's my birthday today, and as in previous years, we're having a bit of a geek day in the middle of our New York vacation.

We start out with a visit to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, located on the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned Essex-class aircraft carrier moored at Pier 86 in the Hudson River. Intrepid is the current home of the Enterprise space shuttle, as well as having been the primary recovery ship for the Aurora 7 and Gemini 3 orbital missions.

We do a quick tour of the flight deck - I'm disappointed to see that the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, stealth aircraft of choice for the X-Men, is not in the best of condition - and then proceed to the Space Shuttle Pavilion for the main event.

Admittedly, in this case the word "Space" is only there as a courtesy. Completed in 1976 and making its first flight in 1977, Enterprise was designed to be a test vehicle for atmospheric operations with the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, and it was never used for orbital missions.

As a result, it lacked most of the elements necessary for use in space: no orbital manoeuvring pods or reaction thrusters, no thermal tiles for re-entry protection, no radar - and no main engines, the shuttle was intended for unpowered "dead stick" landings.

Although it had been planned to refit Enterprise for orbital missions following testing, NASA had modified the shuttle design to such an extent when constructing Columbia, the first operational orbital shuttle, that it was more cost-effective to start from scratch on an alternate test chassis rather than update Enterprise.

After additional test usage, Enterprise was stripped for parts for the other shuttles, and then sent on an international promotional tour, after which it was donated to the Smithsonian Institute in 1985. In 2011 it was moved again, and put on display at the Intrepid museum.

Enterprise was originally going to be named Constitution, but the Star Trek fan base successfully launched a letter-writing campaign to change the name, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the show's cast* were guests at the shuttle's unveiling.**

And you know what?  If we keep doing this sort of thing for long enough, Star Trek fans yet unborn will eventually persuade some future government to name an actual starship Enterprise.

- Sid

* Explanations for William Shatner's absence vary - he was either shooting a movie, trying to avoid high-profile Star Trek events in an attempt to escape type casting, or his agent demanded an appearance fee.

** If you spend a lot of time looking for images on the internet, as I do for the purposes of blogging, you quickly discover that there are some photos that are THE image of choice for a particular topic or event. As an example, this is THE photo of the Star Trek cast and Enterprise.  And, my god - look at the leisure suits!!

NYNY 2019: Choices.

We start out our second day in New York by taking the subway to the redeveloped Hudson Yards area and its controversial centerpiece, the Vessel.  It's a fascinating structure, reminiscent of alien spacecraft and M. C. Escher drawings* - 150 feet in height, and made up of 2,500 steps, 154 staircases, and 80 landings.  In spite of those daunting totals, the short staircases and frequent landings make the climb to the top an easy one, even for people like Karli who suffer from knee problems.  

After our visit to the Vessel, we take advantage of the sunny weather and wander down the High Line, Manhattan's converted rail line/elevated park, toward Chelsea Market.

When we leave the High Line and head down to street level to enter the market, we happen to pass by a book vendor who is just starting to put out his inventory - but it's still enough for me to pick up a couple of unique additions to my library.

The first book is America in Space, a slightly faded black and white NASA publication from 1964, complete with an inspirational introduction by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who couldn't have been president for very long when production began on this book.

It's a fascinating window into the state of the nation for the early days of space exploration, which starts by announcing that America's space program "took a great step forward" with L. Gordon Cooper's 1963 22-orbit mission in the Mercury Faith-7 capsule - perhaps the first time someone at NASA talks about giant steps (but not the last).

The publication comes from a point in time when the planned Apollo missions were in the earliest of planning stages, with work just beginning on the Saturn V rockets, and Neil Armstrong one of nine unproven astronaut trainees brought into the program two years earlier, in 1962. It's an odd little cultural artifact, and I have to wonder what its path has been to this sidewalk tabletop.

My second purchase is, in its way, an equally odd cultural piece: a 1989 Malibu Comics collection of Fu Manchu newspaper comic strips that were originally published in the 1930s.

The character of Fu Manchu, Chinese super villain and master criminal, was created by British author Sax Rohmer in 1913, and is a perfect example of the "Yellow Peril" fears of the late 1800s and early 20th century.  As Nayland Smith, hero of the stories, describes it to his Watson, Dr. Dexter Petrie: "Fu Manchu knows that I alone recognize him as the most evil and formidable personality in the world today, and understand how the yellow hordes of the East plot to destroy Western civilization."   The cartoons also feature the full array of derogatory cliches regarding China:  pidgin English, opium dens, exaggerated physical characteristics, and so on.

At the time of purchase, I was excited to see the collection, but in retrospect, I'm having second thoughts.  In their way, the comics are much a window into a historical state of mind as the NASA publication, but I'm not sure that outweighs the nature of the view through that window.  It may well be that this book will end up in recycling rather than a bookshelf when we get home.

- Sid

* It's also frequently been compared to a shawarma roast - it all depends on your references, I guess.

NYNY 2019: "Thank you for your service."

After a long search, I managed to find some suitable hats for the collection of patches that my friend Chris gave me for my birthday in 2015.  I brought one of the results to New York with me as a backup for my NASA hat, but now I'm afraid to wear it - I'm worried that someone is going to think that I actually served in the armed forces, and I'm not sure how to answer if they ask what my rank was.

- Sid