Space Shuttle Enterprise Lands At JFK
1 min read
The Space Shuttle Enterprise made its last flight today, departing this morning piggybacked atop a 747 from Washington, D.C., and arriving at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
On hand to greet the arrival of the Enterprise was Star Trek‘s Leonard Nimoy, in town for the occasion.
This is a reunion for me,” said Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.
When this ship was first built, it was named Constitution. Star Trek fans can be very persuasive. They sent a lot of letters to President Gerald Ford and the President logically decided that the ship should be named after our spaceship Enterprise.”
The Enterprise space shuttle was originally built to perform test flights within Earth’s atmosphere. It was the only shuttle that never flew in space. It traveled the world though, visiting the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and various places within the U.S.
After a tenure at the Smithsonian Institute National Air & Space Museum’s James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, the shuttle was chosen to be sent to a final home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, which is located at Pier 86 in Manhattan.
“To the Enterprise and to the Intrepid Museum I say, live long and prosper in your final resting place,” said New York Senator Chuck Schumer.
About The Author
Mayor Quimby: May the Force be with you!
Nimoy: Do you even know who I am?
Mayor Quimby: One of the Little Rascals?
It’s appropriate that Enterprise should be at the Intrepid Air & Space Museum.
I was driving on I-95 in eastern New Jersey at the time of the fly-by. I pulled over on the emergency lane of an overpass and had an unobstructed view of the Enterprise/747 combo in the air. Nothing short of WOW!
Went down by the water in Brooklyn and saw it fly overhead. Awesome!
Went to Stevens Institute of Techology in Hoboken. It few right over our heads.
I will never support NASA again. I will support private space initiatives. New York should not have gotten a shuttle. Dayton (National Air Force Museum), Seattle (Air and Space Museum) or Houston were far better places for it. I can’t help but wonder what kick backs the NASA administrator will get for putting shuttles in LA and New York. Neither city had anything meaningful or relevant to do with aviation or space flight development, as required for being awarded a shuttle. And for New York to get a shuttle, with DC just a short train ride away, thus putting 3 shuttles on the east coast, ignoring the mid-section of the US is a slap at the majority of US citizens.
Anybody read the early Diane Carey novel “Final Frontier”? It’s a pre-TOS story with Robert April and George Kirk on the Enterprise, back when it was called… the Constitution. I always figured that was just a way of explaining why the first ship didn’t have the name of its class (i.e. it did, but then it was changed). But now I know there’s a whole other in-joke there.
I saw the Enterprise overflying New York for the last time, and Leonard Nimoy was there to a speech and the news were so
much important that I wrote my article “The Enterprise at the Edge of forever”. I loved this!