By the time the original Star Trek television show premiered in 1966, it had already faced its first cancellation. NBC initially ordered a pilot episode two years earlier but found the resulting product “too cerebral” and passed on picking it for an entire season. One year later, however, the network decided to give the series a second chance and ordered a new pilot, one that they found more acceptable.
After only two seasons, however, NBC was again ready to give up on Star Trek. Aware that the show might be cancelled, a “Save Star Trek” campaign was launched by legendary fans Bjo and John Trimble that encouraged Star Trek afficionados from across the country to write letters to NBC to convince the network to retain the series. The endeavor resulted in an avalanche of mail and a third season for Star Trek as a result.
In 1992, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland launched Star Trek: Federation Science, an original exhibit that used the television and film franchise as an educational tool to explore science. Later that year, Star Trek: Federation Science began traveling to other museums across the country. Unlike the original television series, this particular “trek” lasted over eleven years – including two trips to Europe – and was visited by over five million people by the time it concluded.
“It’s educational, it’s interactive, it’s exciting – and it gets results,” Kim Hinson, marketing director of the Virginia Air & Space Center, told the Daily Press on the eve of exhibit’s second appearance at the Hampton-based museum. “It’s by far one of the best exhibits out there, so it was an easy decision to bring it back.”
Although the exhibit was peppered with props and costumes from the various incarnations of Star Trek, the primary focus was indeed on science rather than the franchise itself. As one made their way through Star Trek: Federation Science, they encountered recreations of the starship Enterprise’s Bridge, Engineering, Science Station, and Sick Bay, but instead of being able to sit in Captain Kirk’s chair, attendees were greeted with over thirty interactive displays that explored the fictional world of Star Trek through the factual science of the times.
“We’re not teaching Star Trek, we’re teaching science,” Marilynne Eichinger, president of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, explained. “We don’t get into the fantasy of Star Trek.”
The mechanics of space travel is a perfect example of the exhibit’s mission. Engineering, for instance, contained Newton’s Rocket Roll, a low-friction chair that moved along the floor backwards when whoever was sitting in it threw a bean bag forward. The goal of the experiment was to demonstrate how Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – is used to launch a rocket into space. It’s not the burning gases shooting downward from a rocket and pushing against the ground that causes liftoff, the exhibit explains, but explosive gases being released downward in general (the action) that causes the rocket to move upwards (the reaction).
A starship of the future traveling through space, meanwhile, can calculate its location the same way that ships traveling across the ocean used lighthouses in the past – through geometric triangulation. If the lengths of two sides of any triangle are known, the third can be easily deduced. The same principal applies to the three angles of a triangle as well. Sailors could thus use the known distances between two lighthouses to construct a triangle to assist with the navigation of their ship.
While there are no lighthouses in space, pulsars can be used in the same manner. A pulsar is the remnant core of a star that spins at a high speed after the star itself has experienced a super-nova explosion. The spinning of the core generates a flashing light just like a lighthouse, allowing triangulation to be used for navigation when traversing the galaxy just as like it is used when traveling across the sea.
Star Trek may claim that space is the “Final Frontier,” but another unexplored frontier exists on Earth itself – the vast depths of the planet’s oceans. The similarities between space exploration and ocean exploration are numerous, as both require protection from severe cold temperatures, an artificial means to breath, and logistic issues that require small living quarters and an ample supply of food and drinking water.
The Aquarius Reef Base – an underwater habitat deployed 62-feet below the surface near Key Largo, Florida – is therefore comparable to the International Space Station as both require the same type of protection for its inhabitants. With a length of 43-feet and 9-feet in diameter, Aquarius is far smaller than the 239.4 by 357.5-foot ISS and can only contain ten days’ worth of supplies for its crew, but the same principles apply nonetheless.
The oceans also offer insight into the Enterprise’s mission of seeking out new life forms. Conventional wisdom had always stated that life could not exist independent from sunlight. In 1977, however, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s deep-sea submersible Alvin discovered hypothermal vents on the ocean floor along the Galapagos Rift, as well as high temperature vents along the crest of the East Pacific Rise.
In both instances, life was found in the form of giant worms and clams existing without sunlight in a deep-sea ecosystem based on chemosynthesis. The discover caused a new understanding of what ingredients and circumstances are needed for life to form not only on planet Earth but potentially within the galaxy as well.
Another part of the Star Trek mission is to “explore strange new worlds,” something that NASA has been doing for decades with robotic probes to other planets. The Magellan Project to Venus was specifically highlighted within the Star Trek: Federation Science exhibit since the probe was sending information regarding the planet’s surface during the 1990s. Using high-resolution RADAR, Magellan was able to scan the topography of Venus and enable geologists and cartographers on Earth to create detailed maps from the images generated.
Star Trek may be science fiction but ever since its first appearance in 1966, the franchise has strived to stay current with the science of its time. This holds true for the original series and The Next Generation although the way through Discovery, Picard and beyond. This combination of science fiction and science fact make Star Trek an ideal tool to entice people of all ages to explore science through the eyes of the franchise.
“One day soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom,” Edith Keeler told James T. Kirk in the “City on the Edge of Forever” episode of the original series. “Energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in some sort of spaceship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each other hope and a common future. And those are the days worth living for.”
Star Trek: Federation Science stands as a testament to those words, and an inspiration for everyone who believes in the power of science.
Anthony Letizia