”Well, it was really a pathfinder,” McDowell tells Inverse regarding the Space Shuttle Enterprise. the very real NASA space shuttle prototype. When I get on Google Meet with Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and member of the Chandra X-Ray team who also is also an aeronautics aficionado, he asks if I’m calling about the NCC-1701 or the OV-101, circling back to the call letters of the fictional Starfleet vehicle vs.
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In January 1977, after the construction of the ship was complete, it was transported to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it began a series of tests to ensure the success of future Space Shuttle flights. Its design included no engine or heatshield, both necessary components of a shuttle destined for space. Unlike its predecessors, Enterprise, perhaps ironically given its namesake, was never intended nor built to enter space. Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Getty Images Early history of the Space Shuttle Enterprise The Enterprise crew meets the IRL Enterprise. Rockwell began to manufacture parts for Enterprise in June 1974. In July of that year, NASA awarded the development contract to Rockwell.
In January 1972, President Richard Nixon announced the development of the Space Shuttle as a partially reusable spacecraft to “give us routine access to space” via cheaper launch vehicles, a more fleshed-out version of the vehicle envisioned under the Space Transportation System. In 1969, initial planning began for the post-Apollo era, announced as the Space Transportation System, with a space station and nuclear rockets to Mars and the Moon that never quite took off. Although Carter never referenced the series when documenting his decision for the name change, it was made quite clear when Gene Roddenberry and many of the cast members of Star Trek were present when Enterprise made its first debut.Įnterprise was first displayed to the public on September 17, 1976, in Palmdale, California, at the North American Rockwell Corporation. Originally set to be named the Constitution to commemorate the bicentennial of the United States, President Jimmy Carter decided to renege on the name after receiving more than 100,000 letters from Star Trek fans, asking for the first Space Shuttle orbiter to be named after the USS Enterprise.
The namesake Enterprise might ring familiar to the fandom of a certain sci-fi series, and that is no coincidence.
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But despite falling short of even cruising altitude in a commercial jet, the entire history of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program piggybacked on the engineering breakthroughs made by this maiden ship on its first free flight. On August 12, 1977, NASA entered a new era with the launch of the Enterprise, a space shuttle prototype that never actually reached space.
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