Why "ENTERPRISE?"
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, before a joint session of Congress
on May 27, 1961, challenged Americans to make the great leap for the Moon
with these memorable words:
"...Now is the time to take longer strides --
time for a great new American Enterprise -- time for this nation to
take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways
may hold the key to our future on earth..."
The President was announcing the beginning of the Apollo
Program, the all-out effort to place Americans "where no one had
gone before" ...on the surface of the Moon:
"...I believe this nation should commit itself
to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on
the moon and returning him safely to the earth... No single space project
in this
period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the
long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive
to accomplish..."
John Kennedy's extraordinary challenge was successfully
accomplished July 20, 1969 -- when Neil Armstrong and "Buzz"
Aldrin finally set foot upon the lunar surface at Tranquility Base ...less
than 8 years following a young President's "ringing call to arms."
But fifteen years after that unique accomplishment, a faltering interest
in the space program by the press and a striking lack of democratic involvement
by the American people called for something new...
Across the Summer of 1976 -- the Bicentennial Celebration
of the United States -- a widening circle of space supporters (organized
by Richard C. Hoagland and a small group of associates, including White
House consultant, Jerome Glenn) produced in three short months over half
a million letters to the President (according to the Washington Post)
-- on the subject of NASA's newest "wonder" following Apollo,
the "space shuttle."
This overwhelming citizen outpouring, coupled with a "White House
Briefing Paper" prepared by Hoagland and his colleagues specifically
for the President, petitioned Gerald Ford to follow a naval tradition
going back at least two hundred years... the "naming of the first
new ship-of-the-line, 'Enterprise.'" The research, and the surprising
public response to the idea, ultimately convinced the President to intervene
directly against the expressed wishes of his own space agency...
Thus, on September 8, 1976, complete with a Marine Corp band
playing the familiar theme, and the creator of the famous television series
in the audience, NASA reluctantly... grudgingly... rolled out the first
of its new shuttles. Except--
After President Ford pulled rank on behalf of the true
"owners" of the space program, "NASA's shuttle" was
no longer "their's" (if it ever was...); it truly became "ours"--
In keeping with John Kennedy's own characterization of
the beginnings of the space age ..."a great American enterprise"...
that ultimately took all of us -- if ever so briefly -- to the Moon.
Jon Eberhart, writing in Science News (September 11, 1979)
would later note:
"It is just possible... that one of the huge vehicle's more important
contributions to the space program was reflected at the rollout by the
name printed on its side in stern sans-serif type: ENTERPRISE. The point
is that a whole lot of people asked something of the space program
-- and got it. The operative difference between Trekkies (sic)
and others interested in space seems only to be that Trekkies know that
it can pay to stand up and be counted [emphasis added]."
Space was supposed to be democratized, both technologically
and politically, on that September afternoon... the grass-roots persuasion
of a President and the successful naming of the ENTERPRISE promising far
more than it could instantly deliver on the Bicentennial:
A "Second Age of Space."
Yet, unknown to all of us in the Fall of 1976, an unmanned Viking spacecraft
only days before... 1000 miles above a lonely Martian desert, had twice
photographed a "curiosity" on Mars... an enigmatic "face."
20 years later... a full generation after the "Enterprise"
was launched and the "Face on Mars" was found... when the real
reason for Apollo now is known...
The real Enterprise Mission has begun.
Welcome to the dawning of the Second Age...
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