Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, July 14, 2025
This lecture is on Monday, not on our usual day.
Lecture starts at 3:00 PM On line, Building 3 Auditorium
Glen Swanson, Ann de Forest, Barbara Brennan
"Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and The Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek"
ABSTRACT -- In Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry sought to create a work of science fiction that would engage viewers not only through clever storylines and modern visual effects, but also by presenting the story in a scientific and technological context that felt believable. Roddenberry, a former WWII combat and commercial airline pilot, used his connections in the aerospace industry to seek out knowledgeable people and agencies to guide his show's popular fiction and give it credibility. This helped elevate Star Trek to greater recognition among influencers in science, industry, and the military. This panel will talk not only about who some of these influencers were, but also how these individuals and agencies helped inspire, legitimize and popularize the original series to help make Star Trek one of the most popular television shows of all time.
SPEAKERS --
Glen E. Swanson is the founder of Quest, the world's only scholarly journal dedicated to the history of spaceflight. He served as the chief historian of NASA's Johnson Space Center. He managed the Center's oral history program, helping to preserve the stories of the half a million people who worked in support of the Apollo program. Now retired, he continues to research and write about space history and the history of science and technology. His articles appear in the Air & Space Smithsonian, the Space Review, and Michigan History. His newest book Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek (Schiffer Books, 2025) will be out this summer.
Ann de Forest is the daughter of Kelllam de Forest, one of two technical consultants who worked on the original Star Trek television series. As a child, she was a regular visitor to the Paramount lot. She also spent several summers working for her father's script clearance company. Ann then went on to become a journalist, essayist, fiction writer, and poet drawn to the resonance of places – whether her native California, her adopted hometown of Philadelphia, or farther afield in Italy and India. Her writing has appeared most recently in Hippocampus, One Art, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the editor of the anthology, Ways of Walking (New Door Books, 2022).
