Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek

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 discusses not only 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 served as the chief historian of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where 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. Ann de Forest is the daughter of Kellam 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. Barbara Brennan retired from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in 2012, after 31 years as an exhibition designer and chair of the Exhibits Design and Technology Division. She was senior designer for "Star Trek and the Sixties," "How Things Fly," "The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age," "America by Air," and "Pioneers of Flight," in addition to numerous temporary installations. She returned to the museum as design manager for the museum's major renovation project (2020-2022) and currently serves in a volunteer capacity, planning art installations in the renovated offices and conference rooms. The trio presented on July 14, 2025, in the Goett Auditorium at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, under the auspices of the Goddard Engineering Colloquium. Hubble Operations Project Scientist Ken Carpenter served as emcee.

What is said in the film

We're all set. Good afternoon, and welcome to the, today's special engineering colloquium at Goddard. Before we start, I just want to mention that the next scheduled engineering colloquium is on August 5th. It will be online only and will be entitled Reading Unreadable Ancient Scrolls by Stephen Persons, who was the lead of the Vesuvius Challenge. So I guess we can guess where the scrolls are coming from.

Okay. Today we have a special event. We're going to have a panel discussion. Initially we will start with Glen Swanson, who has just published, I mean, literally hot off the presses, a book titled Inspired Enterprise How NASA, The Smithsonian and the aerospace community helped launched Star Trek. Glenn 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 and Space Smithsonian, The Space Review, Michigan History. His newest book, whose title I just gave you, from Schiffer books, came off the press just a couple of days ago, and he will have some copies for sale at the end of the colloquium.

And as for the, interested in autographing them for you or any other material you may have brought along. We have two other speakers today, but I'm going to let Glen introduce them to you to do them justice. And, the usual request to turn off all electronic devices if you're in the room and mute yourself if you're online, I guess. And, without further ado, Glen Swanson and Inspired Enterprise. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I am so pleased to be here. This past weekend has been a whirlwind for not only myself, but also my panelists that I'm going to introduce here shortly formally. We attended the Shore Leave 45 convention.

Did I -- I'm sorry, I wasn't close enough. Okay, I'll get you. So there we go. We attended the Shore Leave 45 convention, in, Lancaster, nearby, and had a panel discussion as well. And it was well received to the, participants there of the convention.

I'm really excited by this book because literally after six years of working on it, I just picked it up from the publisher in Atglen, Pennsylvania, just outside of Lancaster, just a few days ago before the convention began. So if you decide to pick up a copy from me here to get it signed, you're literally getting it before a lot of reviewers get it. It's just hot off the press, so to speak. So, if you do want to pick up one, you're more than welcome. We have some copies that we're gonna stick around at the end to have, and our panels will be around here, too, at the end to answer some more questions if we run out of time, as well as to sign the book as well, because they are featured in the book.

So, come on. So let's get started. The, the format is I'm not going to talk first about, my section of it because I want you folks to have time to listen to our panelists, because the folks, these folks, the stories that they have to tell are somewhat covered in my book. But they are here and it's you can read my stuff in the book. Here you can hear it from themselves.

So I want to introduce, the panelists and the two of them will speak first, and then as time allows, I'll adjust my portion of the talk, to fill in the later part of it near the end. So the first one I'd like to introduce is Ann de Forest, and some of you who remember Star Trek The Original Series. And if you even remember reading The Making of Star Trek, which was the bible of Star Trek that was published in 1968, back in the days when there wasn't much information to feed our fandom. Mentions Kellam quite a bit in there. And this is the daughter of Kellam de Forest, and she is here to talk about her father's work.

And so, without further ado, we'll hand it over to Ann. Thanks so much, Glenn. Yep. I, I'll start I'll tell you more about my father's work and his, company, de Forest Research. But I've got to start with an anecdote that once, many years ago, I googled my father.

He was still alive, but. And I found an entry on a Star Trek fan page. I don't remember which one it was, and I couldn't find the the quote now, so it may have disappeared, but it said something like Kellam de Forest was a man with an enormous brain who held an immense amount of facts in his head and drew on them to inform the Star Trek universe. Now wasn't quite like that, as a commenter on the blog was quick to correct. My father was very smart.

I can't vouch for the size of his brain, but his particular genius was not the facts he stored in his head, but his dogged commitment to looking things up or what he would call research. He believed that any question had an answer and he knew how to find them. And thanks to the 1968 book The Making of Star Trek, that Glen just mentioned, the role of my father's company, de Forest research, became well known to Star Trek fans, as did especially the associate who did the week to week work. Joan Pearce, and we'll have a picture of her later, who actually came to, conventions and said would describe herself as a minor celebrity. But, I think such recognition for my father and his work and anything I mean, there so many aspects of Hollywood where things there's so many invisible workers and things that are done behind the scenes.

The research was, not usually recognized. So while his services were invaluable to many TV series and later movies, their contributions were rarely credited and usually invisible. I want to start by talking about my father's own origin story, how de Forest Research came into existence, and the other kinds of services they provided to the industry. Before, during, and after the Star Trek The Original Series. So my father was born in 1926, in Santa Barbara, California.

And I think for many of those involved in the early days of television, this, that part of the 20th century is an era of technological change. It was, you know, the century of progress. We just saw the Roman telescope. And Nancy Roman is also, was born in 1925. So the similar thing were technology, automobile, planes, movies.

They were all had been around less than a generation. My father owed his life to groundbreaking technology. He was born six weeks premature, and he was the smallest baby ever to survive in the hospital that he was born in. When, in 1926. So that, you know, that was a changing time.

And this is him. This is his wallet, his passport from his one and only trip to Europe in 1934. But he was also a native Californian and third generation on his mother's side. His great grandfather had come west for the gold rush. And I think there's also in being a Californian, there was this milieu of reinvention, at the same time, he loved tradition, he loved history.

He was a history major at Yale, which was a family school. He managed the polo team. And so there's he's the one in the top. And he, he always told the story that as a history major, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do with his history degree, undergrad history degree.

He said all the his fellow history majors had decided to go to law school, but he wasn't interested in going to law school. So he went back to California and cast about for what he, what he could do in a career that would suit him and tried out a variety of things. Met my mother, they got married and he decided to move to LA, where he started a business doing research for the nascent television industry. He didn't, I think he didn't completely know what was there and what people wanted to do. But he knew, he knew how to look things up and that people might be willing to hire him.

One of his early jobs was on a series that was called Cavalcade of America. It was a series that, did sort of historic, recreations of historic events using live actors. And he was hired to do background research and making sure that these were accurate. He also got clients, you know, looking for something. He also got clients, writers, Rod Serling, Paddy Chayefsky, a science fiction television writer named Luther Burbank.

They were sort of early supporters of my father and valued his work in providing kind of background information for the stories that they were trying to tell, the teleplays they were writing. Two events kind of broadened his approach to what research was and led him to creating his unique, unprecedented and essential service in Hollywood. The first that he was invited by Desilu Studios. There was an announcement of his leasing the research library at Desilu's lot to come in and take over what had been the shuttered RKO library. Because Desilu had just acquired the whole RKO studios.

And that was primarily a photo and magazine archive that was used by art directors. So if people wanted to know what a, like a New York City bus in the 1940s looked like, they had photos on file that you could look at. Police uniforms, European towns, all these things were, clipped from magazines, glued onto board and put in a, in a file folder. And they were just file-- and, and also he had all these magazines, too. "Look"s, "Life"s, National Geographic, and an immense research library as well of just, of books to look up for sources.

And I'll talk a little bit about that more later. But it was the picture library. So he, he became to provide this service to art directors. But the other big thing, his really first big TV series client was The Untouchables. And the problem with The Untouchables was that, Al Capone's widow was still alive, and she, kept trying to sue the studios for, or the studio for defamation of character because, she said that that I think here, this is I told Glen the story, and he actually went to track this down and found these clips of how that they were tried to sue the producers the about the, in 1959.

And then I guess there was a movie in 1965. And so they needed my father to basically vet every script and say, Al Capone actually did these terrible things. And it's, it's a proven fact. And we, there's not going to be any lawsuit. And they did, they did win in 1959.

And so from those the, the picture library, doing this legal research, which became a big part of his business, he became as one TV guide article called him Hollywood's answer man. So this is a great image of what his office was like. It was an amazing place. I told you about the magazines, just overflowing with books. There were true crime series.

It was a great place to go visit as a kid. One of the things that was important were phone books from every major American city, because they had to look up every name that was mentioned in any script by hand through the cities, city by city, and he, What else? I told you about the magazines. So the Anarchist Cookbook, that's one I remembered, as a kid. Like, say, what is this?

He goes, oh, it's about how to make bombs, because they had to, you know, script, TV scripts would make bombs, and they had to look it up and make sure that that was actually the kind of bomb that they were, they were making an accurate bomb. The checking names was interesting. This is also this is all pre-Internet. So it was now I think we take for granted that we can look these things up and that if somebody wants to know how to pearl, peel a pearl, you might be able to find it. But in those days, somebody would try to invent something in a script of fiction, and then they would ask my father's office to to look it up and find out how to do this and really research the process.

So one of, the two, he always said some of his two big contributions to popular culture, were because of name conflicts and scripts. One is Archie Bunker. The name Archie Bunker was originally, I think, Reginald Bunker. And they looked it up. So he went through a Queens phonebook and he said, sure enough, there was someone by that name, and they suggested the office came back and said, why don't you try Archie?

And so he has that iconic contribution. The other is Noah Cross, who's the villain in Chinatown who was originally named Jason Cross. And theere turned out, then they had to look through a 1930s phone book, found a Jason Cross, and found out he was still alive in Los Angeles. So they suggested Noah, which became, Pauline Kael wrote a review of Chinatown, and it's all about the symbolism of the name Noah in the movie. So my father thought that was a great contribution to an art form.

I want to talk a little bit about how a de Forest report worked and would that would sort of move on to Star Trek, because by showing that, he did things like, he had to flag what's under copyright. Happy Birthday was a copyrighted song. I don't know if it still is, but any time you sang Happy Birthday in a television show or a movie, you would have to pay these two women. I think they're sisters who had the copyright to Happy Birthday to You. They also were looking for logical, logistical inconsistencies or inaccuracies.

One of the favorite jokes in the office was that in every Western, wherever it was set, Montana, Colorado, whatever, somebody would always say, it's a day's ride to the Mexican border, and they would have to say, sorry, it's not. So I think one of the wonderful things about Star Trek was it was really a happy convergence of Gene Roddenberry's vision and de Forest Research's expertise. Gene Roddenberry was committed to creating a plausible, authentic universe in the world in this fantastical world he was creating with the Enterprise. And that was really up my father's alley. And when something didn't work, the researchers would suggest alternatives, which is how I understand it in Glen's book you can read about how the the star date was born, for example.

They didn't like the way that, the the original proposal didn't strike my father and his associates in the office as suitably advanced enough that they would have come up with a better system than the Gregorian calendar. So this is, this is just Gene talking about, corresponding with my father and just praising him for the, level of corrections and things, but also saying, oh, I guess he was trying to say, could you divide up the two kinds of work you do? Because you can see (is the Tribbles one the next one? ) So, okay, so he because of legal challenges, he the the in the office, they identified that the Gorn the story of the Gorn actually already existed and was, short story or novel? Short story.

Yeah. Was a short story. And rather than, rather than cancel it not not air the show, they said, well, why don't you approach the author and see if you can buy the copyright, which they did. Similar with the Trouble With Tribbles, which was very similar to a Robert Heinlein story, and they ended up, convincing Roddenberry to to buy the rights to that so that they wouldn't get sued. But this is kind of an example of the way a report worked.

And it was it was, like an annotated script. So they would underline the line in the script and then they would say, kind of suggest things. Some of them were taken and some of them were not. They like one parsec instead of three light years, was a better measurement. They referred back to the show.

They corrected the grammar. I love in Glen's book, he calls my father a professional nitpicker, and that in some ways is what he was. And then you get to the yellow. It's a green gold ball of fluff, a tribble, and talks about this, a Heinlein story called Rolling Stones and how similar it is. I don't know how they resolve the level.

This might the green and the yellow might be the resolution between the what level of information that Roddenberry was saying that he wanted to, you know, the kind of, more content oriented stuff versus the legal stuff should be separated out. But I, never, I never had to do that. I worked for my father several summers and got well versed in doing a de Forest report. He, I also want to say that they loved Star Trek in my father's office, and I remember how excited my father was when it was coming on the air and said, there's this really great show that's going to come on the air. And, we watched the first episode and we were all entranced.

I was 10 at the time. But I wanted to, but I but part of their a sign of their fandom is that they had a photo of Kirk among the Tribbles hung in their office. So I just want to talk a little bit about going, you know, the soundstage and visiting my father's office. Now, this is, the next image. This is Joan Pearce, my father's senior associate, who worked very closely on Star Trek as well.

And she deserves a lot of credit. And this is when Glen went to visit my father. He showed him where his office was in relationship to the soundstage. So basically, I think his. The far finger is on my father's office.

That's the research library there. And the soundstage is right up around basically around the core. I think it's that big structure, right? Oh, no, I see you're right. That's around the corner.

So we would go if we were going visiting. Like sometimes I would show up after school, sometimes with friends. Or we would often have if out-of-town visitors came to Los Angeles and they would come to the studio for a visit and the Star Trek stage was always very welcoming to visitors. And we would take them there and people would be very, would be impressed. And I remember, you know, as a kid saying, oh, we would go and we'd try to pick up the rocks that were on a planet.

And of course, they weighed nothing. And that impressed us that, you know, so getting a sense of, oh, this is, this is the magic of Hollywood. Later, I remember going into one of the sets, I think that was for a movie when they were doing the first movie, being built and just like it when it was all plywood, basically, and seeing the bridge and seeing the teleporter and it was, you know. Oh, and, and the carpenters like sawing and hammering and that was, that was a fun illusion, as well. And I didn't feel like illusion busting.

It was more like, okay, we get to know how the the sausage is made in a positive sense. I remember William Shatner always, trying to mess shots up. You know, he would stand if he wasn't in the scene. He would be standing in the background making faces to to make people crack up. But I especially remember James Doohan, Scotty, as such a gracious man who would come any time my parents showed up and any time they had guests.

He acted like he was the host of the set. He wasn't in every scene. So he would he would come and he would be, he was an ambassador. And they always had a nice time talking to them. So the other curious fact, I just some of you may know this, that the Star Trek soundstage, after Star Trek became the longtime home for Little House on the Prairie.

So we had a very different, fictitious world that ended up being created there. So this is a this is from, the 25th anniversary, no, the 20th anniversary party, which my parents went to. And that's my, my, my mother, Peggy, and, my father, Kellam. My father, though he was a Californian, always dressed like a preppy in in Hollywood. I think he didn't have to prove that he was a Californian like everybody else who had who was around with their open shirts and their, he always he always went to the office in a in a suit and a tie, and they got to stand on the, transporter pad at the party.

And I love this picture of them. They they were Polaroids that they handed out. And I'm so happy it's in Glen's book. So I just want to say one thing. I was thinking a lot about this.

About sort of the relationship between, the world of the Enterprise and the world of Hollywood and how it works. And my father's office, you know, at the beginning I told you about this idea that he he was a man with an enormous brain, which is kind of this idea of, oh, there's a single genius behind everything. And he was really more about collaboration and knowing how to find, knowing where to call, what to, who, what book to look in, who to call to get the answer to something. One summer, when I was working for him, we got a call from, Starsky and Hutch, and they wanted to know, they would, we would get these bizarre questions all the time. How to say twinkle, how to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in Polish, and I, this is pre Google Translate.

And I said, I got the call. Said, I was like 19. And I said, well how do I find that out? And one of his, my father's associates said, well you call a Polish church. And sure enough I called up a Polish church in Los Angeles, looked it up in the phone book, and the priest answered the phone, and it was Polish.

And he called me back with the answer 15 minutes later. And then I gave, you know, called up the producer at Starsky and Hutch and, gave them, they needed it right away. I think we had to do it verbatim to them, you know, spelling it out and everything. So I just wanted to say that, like the Starship Enterprise, a TV show depends on a collective of skills and expertise and backgrounds, as well as hopes and dreams and complex personalities. And for de Forest Research, like for Gene Roddenberry, a belief that the unknown is not an obstacle.

It's just a question waiting for someone to search for the answer. Thank you. Thank you much. All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. Our next, panelist speaker is Barbara Brennan. And Barbara worked at the Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum. And after 31 years, as an exhibits designer and chair of the exhibits design and technology division, she was senior designer for Star Trek in the '60s and a host of other exhibits.

Yeah, lots of things -- she's going to talk about work on the specifically the Star Trek exhibits, the, the, the one in the '80s and in the 1990s, especially. And then also that's her on the cover of my book. Yeah, actually studying the the Enterprise for Mark Avino, who's taking the photograph, the pretty photograph to go in all the public affairs. So and we had just rolled it out of the Garber Facility storage shed, and it was swinging back and forth. And he's like, stop it, you know.

So there I am. He caught me, studying me nervous, all nervous. I'm touching an artifact. So, but this is a perfect segue because you mentioned, Ann, about how many people get involved, and it's not just one brain. You could be talking about exhibit design, museum design, museum exhibits.

Exactly. Perfectly. So that's what I wanted to mention is that, not quite close enough is that, there are many, many people on the team. I was the lead designer. I had an assistant designer who was wonderful.

I worked very closely with the curator, lighting designer, people who do collections processing, we, people in the public affairs office. And we had to hire people for the crowds that came. So because it was the first exhibit that was ever ticketed at the Smithsonian. So, there were just a ton of people involved. So I'm going to try to call out the names of some of those people, maybe six or seven as I go through, of the team.

But, also just to say, okay, what does a curator do? The two people who are supposed to be at the top. We have one here in Margaret Weitekamp. Mary Henderson curated the Star Trek exhibit. She wrote the label script.

She decided what kind of a story she wanted to tell, how it would flow through the exhibit. How much space we had, how many artifacts she wanted to use. Because we're telling a story and we're using words and objects to to enhance that story. And those are all things of the curator, and also writing a book. But, those are the things that you're doing in the actual exhibit.

As a curator. My job as a designer is really to support the curator. I always feel like the designer, you know, if you want to be a famous artist or something, don't be a designer, because designers always work for somebody, and it's your job to make whatever they want happen. I also want to make it one of my focuses at the Smithsonian. My entire career was accessibility and interactives and immersive experiences.

So you're going to see a couple of those here that I was already starting in 1991. So let's start with the research. When we, start the research before the, design and installation. And so what you're looking at now, Mary and I went out to Paramount. Lucky us.

And we she set all this up. We got to meet with Bill Theiss, the costume designer, and that's him in the top left. And he's demonstrating how he used orange plastic placemats to create something that looked like armor. And it's the kind of thing of, you know, if they break or something goes wrong with them, you can always go out to the five and dime and buy more plastic placemats. And he's showing us another costume and how it went together.

We knew we wanted to have toys. Mary knew she wanted to have a collection of toys. So she had contacted a collector, and we went to his home. That's one photograph. All these photographs that you're going to see.

For the most part, the color ones I took. I, just was recording the whole thing. That was kind of my hobby to just record everything that we did. Luckily, because these are the only ones left now. But we went to the collector of toys.

We only had one case. We were told that we could, you had to use artifact cases that had been used in previous exhibits. So we go out to storage and I measure them before we go on this trip, and I, and then we figure out we can only borrow, like, 3 or 4 toys and look at how many are there on the shelf after shelf floor to ceiling. How do you pick 3 or 4 out of those? Luckily, that was Mary's job, not mine.

So we we worked together to measure them and figure out how they would go into the cases. And then we, you know, we told the lender and then we leave. We just go and we're going to have those shipped later on. Then we go down to the costume where the storage is, and the bottom picture is Mary and Bill, the costume designer again. And they're looking at a whole rack of the, of Kirk's costumes.

And we're trying to have another big decision to make. Okay? Some of them are torn and some are bloody and some are dirty for whatever adventure he, you know, experienced in each episode. So there was a big decision. Okay.

That's really great. That's a great story. But is that this story? So no, Mary decided really, let's just let's just borrow the pristine ones that they look like when they're at the helm. And, and so Bill, you know, pulled out several that worked for every one of the crew members for us, and we picked those while we were there, and then they got shipped later as well.

So that's the research part. Let's go on to the next then then if you look at the top left, it's very hard to see. But there's, our collections processing person, Lily Gorham , and there you can see the Enterprise on a stand in front of her. She's got a table full of artifacts, and she's just. They get shipped into there.

That's a secure storage out at the Garber facility. And so, you know, daily. And then Mark Aino, the photographer I mentioned earlier, was out there working with Lily to photograph everything, to do condition reports, to complete the loan agreements, to have them signed by the lenders. It's quite a process. And this is all happening behind the scenes.

Then Mary and I started dressing the mannequins. We had to go buy mannequins from a source. This guy had these stored in his basement, and, we bought a ton of mannequins and made the decision. This was my decision, actually, to cut off the heads and the arms and paint them all silver so that, because we wanted the focus to be on the costumes, the beautiful designs, of Bill Theiss. And, also, people knew which actress wore that costume or which actor.

And so we would never be able to match the faces of those actors. So, that was seemed like the best solution was just cut off their heads. Okay. And when I, I got a reputation at the production shop, and when they were actually doing that, we had a big laugh about me and being so brutal, but I thought it worked. So there we were, testing out the fit, in the middle, top middle and the far right.

Then once that had been cut off in the, painted silver, Mary is making the final touches on the, costume. I mentioned that we had, one of the costumes was orange plastic placemats. This one was purple plastic placemats as well. Then down below, you'll see a couple of people, Gary Fletcher and Eugene Jones. They are the ones who installed.

We have a fabrication shop where we have, all of the labels printed. We had a typesetting, photo typesetting machine. Then that's a job that went away. Photo typesetter. I helped do that with our photo typesetter and lay out all of the, labels.

And then you make negatives out of them and send them out to our production facility where they're silkscreened. And so then, you know, it's a big process, quite involved. And then the third one from the left at the bottom, you can see Bill Theiss luckily came out to help us dress the mannequins right before the show because really they're very complicated. And he brought a huge sewing kit with him to repair. And, and they were all taped on in just the right places.

And, you know, he really was the only one who knew how they went together. So. And you can see that some of them are on silver posts that was one way that I just got them to stand better heights, because I didn't, I didn't want legs showing. So I'm really going with focus on the costumes, please. So and then the far right and that's me again down in the bottom left corner, directing the actual hanging of the artifact.

When it came in. Okay. Let's see here. So this is the final installation. We had a large case.

I don't know if anybody was at the museum when we used to have the S. S. Pussiewillow there? Maybe? S long, long time ago.

So that's the large case that the S. S. Pussiewillow used to be in. So that was a very complicated thing to move that thing out of there. And, but that's where you can see all of the nice, pristine crew shirts on, torsos and posts and excuse me, then you also can see, the costumes that Bill dressed.

And I think they turned out pretty. Pretty well. And there and there's Mr. orange placemat robot. On the far right bottom.

The next, So this is the installed exhibit, and the entrance. And that's my assistant down below in the bottom left, Linda King. We were listening to a story from Greg Kennedy yesterday about how he, just as a teenager, 14 year old, went and walked into the Space history Department of Air and Space and, and, met someone and was immediately welcomed in. Well, same thing with Linda. Somebody came up to me and said, oh, there's this teenager, there's this high school senior in the theater who is an usher who's interested in design.

Can she work with you? Oh, sure. Bring her up. You know, and, she worked for the museum for many, many years. So there she is, sitting in the captain's chair at the bottom left.

And Linda actually designed the Star Trek wording at the entrance. And then she and I, the fabrication shop painted the, entrance to all that dark blue she went on down there, she and I, with white paint and splattered all the star field onto it. So that was a lot of fun, you know. You know, and then the middle at the top is a theater , that was one of the most expensive parts getting the permissions for the video, for the film. And that we used that had interviews with Gene Roddenberry and with a lot of the crews, and also that, the screen that divides the theater area kind of darkens it as well.

But, it divides it from the entrance area. We didn't want people to go that way. This is one of the things that the designer has to do too: make you visitors go where we want you to go. And one of our ways to do that is to just block the view of something that might entice you to go back down that way. So, a big curtain helped with that.

And the theater, the film was very popular. I know you've been looking for copies of it, and I just don't know where they are if they even exist. But, so part of my interactive, fun things that I like to do as a designer is I wanted to have a transporter room. So that's, one that was created on the far right there. I worked very closely with Frank Florentine, the lighting designer at Air and Space.

He came up with those lights overhead, and we, we bought some, that interesting fabric that he backlit. And we made the big screen, and those those are Fresnel lenses along the bottom. That and the We actually had, Bones and Spock and Kirk, we had the three figures printed full size, so that they're, they're standing there next to the Fresnel lenses on the floor, and visitors can get their picture taken. It was a great photo opportunity, a lot of fun. So, I really like fun.

I like my visitors to have fun. And, so one way that they have fun is they take home photographs. Well, now the ubiquitous selfie. But, that was the my original idea for having selfies. This is opening night.

Unfortunately Roddenberry died Gene Roddenberry died, not too long before the open. He was aware that we were working on it, but, but, Majel Barrett is there, second in from Scotty. James Doohan, that super nice guy. And, so, yeah, we don't have that many of us left anymore, unfortunately. So, Bones and Kirk and Spock did enjoy going into the transporter room.

They're laughing. They're standing there laughing. And Linda King, the, assistant designer is below, meeting Nichelle before the opening. And then we had the speakers, including Bob Justman and Brandon Tartikoff. Are there, as well as me and Mary and Majel Barrett.

Oh, one more slide. Yeah. So this is kind of the history. That poor artifact has been hither and yon, but, it is now, thanks to Margaret, in a very special place in the south lobby of the Air and Space Museum, in a climate controlled case where every, every time I exhibited it, I just hung on out in the open. No, but climate control is perfect, and I think the lights just come on once an hour or something like that, because light can be very damaging and also can build up heat.

So, and believe it or not, I mean, I love this modern stuff is that there are things in this case that send reports out to the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, which is, I don't know, 40 miles away, something like that. So they're able to to actually respond and, and call somebody downtown and say, hey, it's getting too hot in there. The temperature or the moisture is getting too high or whatever. So it's, it's really a very, very modern case. And visitors love it.

And that's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So what you heard was, stories and backgrounds from, both the aerospace community via Ann here who talked about her father working, actually, first one of two technical consultants and then, of course, Barbara talking about the Smithsonian's connection.

So what I want to spend the last, time that we have available is to talk about NASA's connection, which is what drew me originally. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not a techie person. Sorry. Which is what originally drew me to, create this book when I was the historian at the NASA Johnson Space Center. I came across some documents because I had access, of course, as the as the chief historian there, to many files, not only federal files with the archives, and NASA, but also various institutions.

And, of course, I was a Star Trek fan. I grew up with Star Trek fan as a Star Trek fan, not really. When it ran originally I wasn't quite old enough because it was on quite late in the evenings, but I picked it up in syndication in the 1970s, so I was a syndication kid. I followed it there, and I could get Star Trek five days a week, as opposed to once a week when it was originally aired. So I was just drawn into the series, and when I started to find documents, with correspondence pertaining to the original television series and NASA, I got really, really intrigued because I was curious about how extensive that was, what there's been many publications, many books about how Star Trek has influenced others.

Engineers. Many of, some of you in this audience, perhaps because there's some gray hairs and no hairs here that may have been influenced by the original television series at one time to pursue careers in math and science and aerospace. So I was really, really, curious about then what influenced Star Trek. Okay, the, Gene Roddenberry and all the creators of the original television series. And so that's what accelerated me to, you know, dig further, to find the NASA story and then uncovering the Smithsonian story that you shared here, as well as, other contributions within the aerospace community.

So on the NASA side, one of the things that I found, of course, was that Southern California is a great place for not only filming movies because of the clear skies and, the plenty, plenty of sun. But that also is what attracted a lot of the aerospace industry. Those same conditions that work well for filming also worked very well for testing aircraft. And so, 60 to 70% of the aerospace industry in the United States, especially in the 1960s when Star Trek was first being created, were located in Southern California. And you could see on this plaque here, which was, outline of California, it lists a bunch of aerospace companies that in this case, particularly contributed to the Apollo 11 mission.

This was on a display an exhibit for, the, one of the Apollo 11 anniversaries. And then up on the upper right hand corner there, you see the various names of the aviation companies. Many of them merged over time. But some of them we're still very familiar with their names. And then, of course, the, the companies that produced films, one of the documents, early documents that I found while I was digging, was this report that was produced in, in conjunction with a symposium that was held, and some of you might recognize the structure that's on there.

There was a study that was done by the McDonnell Douglas Corp. , Douglas Corporation at that time, for a space station. And they actually built models for this space station. And, the K7 space station that we see in Trouble with Tribbles, a classic episode that even if you're not a star Trek fan, many people remember that episode because it was just wonderful, in fact, Kellam contributed to its success. Because it was based on the storyline or the critters were very similar to a novel by Robert Heinlein, and it had to be approved and everything.

So the models that Douglas created for that were salvaged. And I was talking with Mike Okuda back when I was working at JSC. He was curious about the origins of those. And, we think that they might have been tossed out at some point because remember the location for many of these studios was very close to the aerospace industry. So you could walk almost across and, you know, dumpster dive to find some of this stuff.

And then engineers and so forth would be watching Star Trek, you know, in the first season and so forth, and say, hey, I really like this show. You know, maybe this might be something worthwhile. And so it's not real clear how the model was acquired. But what is clear is that the model was acquired by Richard Dayton, who built the original three foot prototype model of the Enterprise, as well as the 11 foot model that's on display at the Smithsonian, based on drawings by Matt Jeffries, the art director. And you can see here that, the three smaller pods of this inflatable space station, okay, formed in the original model here form the three pods on the axis here.

You had these booms, and then the larger one was modified to make the central one here. Here was on display at a school or whatever. The story's not really clear about the origins of this or, why that photo was taken. But, but it was made from an existing model. So there's one big contribution influence by the aerospace industry.

And I focus on the visual stuff because photos tell a lot. Of course, there's a lot more information about this, about the construction of that, how Richard Dayton documented it, the material and everything that you'll find in my book. So I'm just, you know, zipping through this quickly to kind of tease you. But, many of you might be interested in Goddard's connection to Star Trek, which was a big one. Some of you here might remember Barbara Moran.

Is there anyone here that perhaps remembered her? She worked with, Doctor Clark, who is former director of Goddard and her children were be Star Trek fans. She was an administrative assistant. That's her right here in, Excuse me. Alberta?

Yes, Alberta. Are you Barbara? Barbara Scott? Hello! Alberta Moran.

Yes, Alberta Moran. Excuse me. So Alberta Moran is right here. That's her. She was a member of the National Space Club.

Barbara Scott, by the way, is the one that helped me talk with, introduced me to talking with her before she passed away. And, anyways, her kids were big fans of Star Trek, and they were putting together a dinner for the National Space Club. The National Space Club was founded in 1957 originally as the Rocket Club. The National Rocket Club after Sputnik was launched. And then, it basically was, an event that was organized each year, usually in March, and they would bring in titans of industry in the aerospace industry as well as, educators, the government and the media, to promote the aerospace industry at that time.

And so, they would have a memorial, Goddard Memorial Symposium and dinner each year, and the symposium would bring in speakers where they would talk about various, programs and, projects that were underway at the time. And then in the evening of that day that they had it, they would have a memorial dinner and, asked for, suggestions for speakers. And the daughters, suggested, why don't you get someone from Star Trek? And so she made contact and asked if first William Shatner would be available to come and speak at the event in 1967, and he wasn't available. But Mr.

Spock was, Leonard Nimoy. So Leonard Nimoy was flown out, to Goddard and on March 14th. And that first picture in the upper left hand corner is, Alberta meeting Leonard along with her daughter Penny here, and then her daughter's friends on either side here. They had kind of like a Star Trek club. I spoke with Penny as well as interviewed Alberta, when I was working on the book.

And they toured Goddard. And here, Barbara is down below. Conferring with Leonard getting his notes together and so forth while he was visiting Goddard. And then, there he is with his wife, Sandi, who joined him as well, touring, the Goddard facility, with these two individuals. And then in the evening they had the dinner and, this is James Webb, who was the administrator of NASA, and which the Webb telescope is named after him.

And then, of course, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and his wife, Annie, and they're at the dinner as well. And then down below, here is Esther Goddard with the congressman and Hubert Humphrey. I put all these individuals up there and name them, because it was a pretty high profile event. And the fact that an actor from Star Trek was invited not to speak at the dinner, but to basically be there. Was quite, the event at the time.

And of course, Gene Roddenberry took advantage of that to help promote the television series because the fact that, you know, that they were there following that event in 1967, Gene Roddenberry and the folks at Star Trek got an invitation to tour NASA's Dryden facility out at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And this is a group shot. This shot here was taken April 13th, 1967. So not very long after, the dinner itself. And they were gathered to tour actual spacecraft.

Okay. Here we see some of the cast members. You can see Scotty and then there's Matt Jeffries, who is the art director who designed the Enterprise. And then these other individuals here, probably not familiar, but they're very much the movers and shakers of the series. This is Herb Schlosser, who was head of West Coast operations for NBC at the time of Star Trek.

He moved on and up the chain in NBC to eventually become president of NBC. And, I guess some of the more important things that he did besides his affiliation with Star Trek, is he helped bring us Saturday Night Live. Later on, the decision to have that, because Johnny Carson didn't want to work on weekends for The Tonight Show. And so, they wanted to fill that time with something. And so Saturday Night Live was born.

Of course, Gene Roddenberry, the creator over here and then we have Greg Peters and Marc Daniels. Both of these folks are directors. Here's Justman who was at the Smithsonian in '92 and then Doctor McCoy, DeForest Kelley and Joe Penny, and then the end folks here on either side, I don't know who they are. And they're standing in front of the HL 10, which is an experimental lifting body that was used by NASA as a predecessor to the space shuttle. And then they continue to tour these spacecraft, this is Bruce Peterson, a test pilot here, and he's, pointing out a piece of hardware in front of Scotty.

And the back there is the M2F2 lifting body and, what's interesting about the composition of that photo, as well as the characters that are featured in it, is Bruce Peterson was the test pilot for that. And about six weeks after this photograph was taken, that lifting body basically went out of control as it was approaching the desert sands on Edwards Air Force Base and tumbled around end over end, and there was footage of this, and all this footage was shown in our living rooms weekly as the introduction to The 6 Million Dollar Man with Steve Austin, a man barely alive with bionics and everything, from the 1970s. And, Bruce Peterson survived that horrendous accident. He did lose an eye in it, but he survived and continued to be a test pilot. And the space and the lifting body, the M2F2, they added another vertical stabilizer to the center of that, and it became the M2F3.

And so Bruce Peterson survived until he died of natural causes later. And then the spacecraft survives to this day, is on display at the Smithsonian. So and so here we continue on with some of the other, spacecraft. I just want to quickly point out we've got the X-15, which were genuine spacecraft. And so this photograph here is quite interesting because here you have characters and cast members and production designers touring a facility where there's genuine spacecraft and, I can't help but think that influences them, tremendously, especially Matt Jeffries, who's right here.

I'm sure he was tickled. This photograph here is a color photograph of the same scene there. This is eye candy for the, the folks that are interested. I used to sell this in Quest magazine. It was a very popular photograph.

But you see all these vehicles lined up here? C-47 on the end here to remind us how far we've come, as far as advancing. And that X-15, number one and three and two. And that vehicle, there was a number one, which is, the one up front here where they were surrounded. So one of the things also that I wanted to mention, with the Smithsonian connection as well as the NASA connection was, during that dinner, the National Space Club that, I mentioned briefly, there were the individuals who in attendance.

There was, someone who worked for Fred Durant and Fred Durant worked for the on National Air and Space Museum. He was hired there in 1965. He worked there for 15 years, retired in 1980. He was a big science fiction fan, and he also liked to collect space art he was the mover and shaker that, initiated efforts to get the pilot, of Star Trek in the archives at the, at the Smithsonian. And when I say pilot, I'm I'm talking about the second one.

Star Trek originally had two pilots that was not unique to television at that time, in spite of what you may have heard, there were other television series also that had more than one pilot made. It's just, the second one was the one that sold it to NBC, and the Smithsonian asked for that pilot to be added to their collections in 1967. And that message was given during the Goddard Memorial Dinner that I talked about earlier. And so in August of 1967, you know, once after the Goddard Memorial event, there was a formal ceremony that was held at the, Arts and Industries Building, which was the predecessor to the Air and Space Museum, where they housed aircraft and spacecraft. And this is, S.

Paul Johnston receiving a 16 millimeter color copy of Where No Man Has Gone Before from Gene Roddenberry. And that was a big thing, because in spite of all my sincere efforts and research, I have not been able to verify or find another, request for a television pilot by the Smithsonian. So this was a big thing. And Gene Roddenberry, of course, the barker that he is being the promoter that he is, that was essential to keeping the series going, made a big thing of this. And so there were a lot of newspaper articles that came out capitalizing on this fact.

And people took notice of that, important people took notice of that. And I think, indeed, it did make a difference to increase the credibility, and, prestige of the television series because if the Smithsonian recognizes it, maybe we should too. And so these annual newspaper articles, kind of like that, the connection, again, with Star Trek to NASA continued on even after, receiving the pilot. This is a photo again of--. Excuse me.

Yeah. I got excuse me, right here, Alberta again with Gene Roddenberry. And basically what they are doing here is they are, was, invited Gene Roddenberry to attend a launch at Vandenberg Launch complex in 1968. And this is something I never knew about before until I talked with her. And this is a photograph that was taken of an early morning launch for it Roddenberry was invited to attend this launch by, by her.

And then after the launch, they had a birthday party for Gene Roddenberry's daughter because Penny was the same age or close to the same age as Gene Roddenberry's daughter. So they had a birthday party for her, that followed the launch. And, of course, the kids were just thrilled with this to no end. So they had the birthday party. They toured the sets.

It was quite, quite the scene. And of course, that's described in a little bit more detail in my book. So kind of winding up because we're at the our end of the hour here, and, and talking about the influence that NASA had on Star Trek and the television series. This is a flier that went out in 1967 to the various networks or to the affiliates to encourage them to carry Star Trek. And for the second season, this is '67-'68.

And it's kind of hard to read, but you'll see over here, Goddard mentioned quite prominently, in conjunction with the Goddard Memorial. And, also Leonard Nimoy is touring, the facility here. And so they recognize the value of that again, to make that connection with, with NASA to help promote the television series, its believability, its authenticity, its scientific nature, which was relatively new. I mean, there's Lost in Space was showing at the same time, but that was a different animal. Star Trek, they really made an attempt to make it believable, make spaceflight believable.

And the technology at the time, you really thought you were living in the 23rd century. So in closing, I want to show this last slide here, which is a compilation of different things, to, impress upon you the influence. This little picture here is another ad that was, appeared at the time. This was, in 1967, it appeared in Variety magazine and it was placed in there to help encourage, candidacy to win an Emmy, you know, basically to, to be nominated for an Emmy. And Star Trek was nominated for Emmys, during its original airing, but unfortunately did not receive anything.

They weren't awarded anything. I want you to see again Goddard. It's blurry, but you can see it right up here. Unsurpassed production, NASA Goddard Space Center right at the top here. Okay.

As an endorsement. So there's importance there just in the priority of how these are listed. You know, advertising especially a full page ad is expensive. It has to be well thought out. And so they put NASA right on the top here.

So it was definitely important to them to, to advertise that connection and promote it. You can see up in the left, left hand corner here. This is a photograph that was taken in 1967 during Mariner 5's close approach to Venus. These are two engineers. I have their names, but they're in the book.

I can't remember them off hand, but this is a photo where they're wearing, I like to call them Spock ears, but it's not entirely sure that that's what they were. It was more. It could be Martian ears or Venusian ears because, Mariner 5, which is on display at the Smithsonian, I think, hanging up the engineering, you know, back up or whatever, you know, did a flyby of Venus. And so, yeah, they were doing some cosplaying while doing work during Mariner 5's closest approach at Mission Control in JPL. JPL.

And then, I put in here some sort of a photograph of some young folks that were, at the convention that I attended this last weekend because they are the spirit of Star Trek. They continue to enjoy it. I talked with them. I gave them copies of the book. And I think it embodies a lot of what the spirit of Star Trek is.

And then down here at the end, I have a little letter, a quote an excerpt. And I'd like to read that in closing, because I think it's, especially important Leonard Nimoy wrote this two page letter to his boss, Gene Roddenberry, after he toured NASA Goddard and, attended the Goddard Memorial Dinner. And in this part here, he says, I do not overstate the fact when I tell you that the interest in the show is so intense, they would almost seemed, they NASA and he was talking about the NASA folks feel we are a dramatization of the future of their space program, and they have completely taken us to heart. They are, in fact, proud of the show, as though in some way it represents them. Now, in retrospect-- Another thing that was happening during the time that this letter was written, after he attended the Goddard Memorial, it was only six weeks after the Apollo 1 fire, and so the mood at NASA was extremely somber.

Now, those of you who don't remember the Apollo 1 fire, that was a tragedy in which three astronauts Edward White, Gus Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee lost their lives on a pad fire down at Kennedy Space Center. And, this was during the race to the Moon when we were engaged in, a race to get the first person to land on the surface of the Moon. And this was a tragedy that set, the program back. And a lot of people didn't think we were going to continue on at the time.

But when they were at that Goddard Memorial dinner and I was talking with Penny about this because she was there working. I don't think Penny is here in the audience, but, she was telling me she was working at the courtroom at the time and says, could you describe to me the environment, especially at the end of the dinner when Leonard Nimoy was sitting at the main table there with all these brass and everything, you know, what was it? She's Oh, they just they just crowded around Leonard Nimoy. They didn't even want the vice president's autograph. They wanted Leonard Nimoy's autograph.

Because these people realized that in the presence there, it wasn't just Leonard Nimoy the actor, but it was, it represented of the 23rd century. And I think those folks and there was a lot of NASA people there, a lot of aerospace people there, they realized that we're going to make it to the 23rd century, okay, we just have to get through these obstacles. So I know there's a lot of that kind of going on now, and I think we're going to make it to the 23rd century. It's going to, it's going to get here. And I think Star Trek helps inspire us through these difficult times to get through those things.

So with that, I'd like to close and if you do have any questions, it's 4:06 right now. If you want to flee, that's fine. But if you do have some questions, maybe we could take some. Thank you so much for a wonderful talk. And panel presentation.

And then we'll take a few questions now from the audience or online. And then we'll retire to the front lobby where Glen will have copies of his book for autographing and sales. So let's start it off. You'll be able to see on the monitor that doesn't have like, questions. Okay.

And if anyone in the audience here has questions, go to the microphones on the sides so the people on line can hear you. And we got four old people up here. I don't know if any of us can read the monitor. Do you see that one? I see the question for me.

Was the late Karen Loveland involved in making the documentary? She may have been. Patty Woodside was the producer of that documentary, and I'm in touch with her quite a bit. And she has an amazing memory. I just, I don't know how she does it, but she knows every name of every person who she worked with at the Smithsonian and on this project.

So I'd be happy to take that question to her and get back to you. Okay. Anything else for me? I think the rest of them, it looks like about the book, it will be available for purchase on Amazon. There's a commercial there.

There's something about the audio, but that seems to be about it from the online ones. Anyone else in the audience here have any questions? One comment that I wanted to make two about with Kellam, with Ann's talk here is that Kellum was hired as a technical consultant. But. And then you'll read in my book, another technical consultant was Harvey Lynn, who worked, came from the military.

So there's an interesting comparison between the two. Because Kellam worked as a historian, Educated at Yale, and Harvey Lynn was, retired eventually as a colonel, in the Army. And he was a chemical engineer, and saw service and so forth. And then he worked for Rand Corporation. That was his full time job after he left the service.

But he was not employed by Rand to consult with Star Trek. He did that on the side. And so there's a big difference there. I think that, you know, as people read the book between the two, Kellam, this was just this was another customer, a client that he had because he worked on other television series, as well. Harvey Lynn just did this on the side because he was interested in the television show and Well, Kellum was as well.

Okay. I just wanted to point that out as kind of a difference between the two and not only their backgrounds, but what motivated them. And Kellum served as a technical consultant not only through the original three season run of Star Trek, but he also worked on the movies and the animated series as well. So he he stayed with them for quite a while. I think he also worked on The Next Generation.

Yeah, yeah. And then all of his files, by the way, which are massive, are, donated to the University of California, UCLA and are accessible for-- and it's. Huge. He's, you know, he worked on hundreds of television shows and movies during his career. And then before he passed away, he donated all of that collection for other researchers.

So it's a massive amount of material that's accessible. Question over here on the right. I think we there you go. So my first question was about the, the models borrowed. When you mentioned dumpster diving, I was curious if like, did they, like, throw something out and then see it on the show two weeks later?

Like how interesting. Did they throw something? What, you know, for, when you were discussing the, the dumpster diving in the models, they were borrowing the, for, like, the, Trouble with Tribbles station. Like, I just thought it was an amusing anecdote because it seems like they would throw something out into a dumpster, and then they'd see it on the show two weeks later because somebody went and fished it out of there. Yeah, that was the Smithsonian.

And but I know what you're talking about. So yeah, it was it was, you know, some models and we don't know for sure that that's how they were retrieved. It sounds good. We don't know for sure if it but there was no formal paperwork that we found that those pieces that were built by Douglas Aircraft for the K7 space station were formally, you know, given to, Richard Dayton to create the K7 space station. So he may have got them from someone rather than diving in the dumpster, but then, you know, people wouldn't think much about that material at the time.

It's just like, even after Star Trek was done, the, the acquisition of the Enterprise by the Smithsonian, which I talk about in there, you know, they received it in 1974, back when Star Trek really wasn't much. Well, it was, it was getting there. I mean, there were fandom and the syndication was gone. But Paramount at that time, Gulf and Western owned it at that time, you know, that interested you know, it. They didn't think the Star Trek thing would go very far.

And so that was, the willingness to part with it, but also the motivation. Interest by Fred Durant. And then preceding that, of course, was receiving the pilot as well. So there was precedent, you know, for receiving this. The pilot thing is interesting, too, because I should point out and I mentioned this in the book, there's 500 endnotes in the book.

So, you know, if you get, if you want to dig deeper, you can look into the back of the book and see it. But, because I was trying to find another pilot that was, the requested by the Smithsonian couldn't find, the closest thing I found was 2001, the movie, after the movie came out in '68. Yeah. '68. The, Smithsonian did approach MGM.

That was the production studio for it, for a copy of the film, and MGM turned them down. But they had valid reason, because they had just donated a copy to the Library of Congress and so was expensive. You know, it was film, it wasn't digital. And it was a very polite, professional letter that was on file at the Smithsonian archives saying, you know, this. We we'd already donated.

You might not have been aware of that when you made the request, but we already donated to the Library of Congress. So there's really no need to donate to the Smithsonian. Which is nice, because I can still say Star Trek is is the one. I want to add to that, though. When I met Bill Theiss, the only reason all those gowns and the, you know, robot and plastic things survived was because he took them home with him and he loaned them.

Well, first of all, at first he showed them to Mary and me. And he said, you know, the Paramount doesn't know I have these, you know, all the uniforms in the in that stuffy storage room where we went and picked out, you know, the shirts, those those were there still at Paramount and not not well cared for at all. But the but the gowns, the gorgeous gowns, they were Bill's that he took them home. I don't know what happened to them after we were we were talking earlier at lunch about sort of that whole affect, that attitude in Hollywood that and I think this is related to the question about the model and then using the placemats to make costumes. I think there's this attitude of just kind of, let's make it up, let's put things together and see what happens.

And I, you know, this really a costume designer says, oh, okay, I know what kind of materials to use. So a lot of using found materials, but also that the way that the studio would have, you know, costumes on racks that would get recycled for various shows they had. My father's office was right next door to, a prop department that was all like just old furniture, old books, you know, things that look like a junk room, kind of. And then the art directors would kind of go shopping in there for whatever they wanted. Authentic.

So the dumpster diving would be probably part of that whole attitude. Like, where can we find this? Oh, well, we'll go look at the the aerospace trash can and see what we can find. I did have sorry. One second question.

For your father's research, I guess I'm curious. How did he know when to stop? Like, oh. At what point was he satisfied with an answer that he felt comfortable enough giving it? Well, that's a really good question because he, in some ways he could just look things up.

But one of the, one of the interesting mechanisms in that office was that they were on the time of the production of a television show. So which was really fast. The turnaround was really fast. They had to. So every person who worked in the office had like maybe half a dozen shows that they were working on, and the scripts would come in on Monday and you would have to read them and do the report, and then they would make the changes and you would get what they called change.

Pages would come in and all the scrap paper in my father's office was, was change pages like you would take out. I forget they were color coded. And my husband's sitting here, we were we were, a couple in college, and I used to write him letters, on the back of, Charlie's Angels scripts. Change the change pages. To say this is the kind of place I'm working at.

But I think that. So that kind of forced them to, to stop. You know, I think that there was something about the deadline and the, the production schedule that they had to get. They had to get it out. So, he, he liked, so it was it was good.

It was like a quick thing because otherwise he is somebody that would just keep looking it up, looking it up, looking it up. But it's a great question. Okay. One more question here from Jennifer. Okay.

Just, quickly, what happened to, Kellam de Forest's research company? I mean, is there something similar today or, how did that evolve? And one more quick Googling accuracy for this. Yes. Go ahead.

So it was, I mean, things change. Things changed in Hollywood. He actually had to, the when Gulf and Western bought Paramount, they became a little more corporate. So first Paramount bought Desilu absorbed Desilu and then, Gulf and Western bought Paramount. And they went through a period.

It was in the mid '80s, I think it was 1986, where they basically kicked him off the lot where he had been for 30 years working. I think the deal was he worked virtually rent free and had a and then worked at, the other shows at a, they had a rate for the shows that were coming from that production company. So we ended up having to go into Hollywood and rent and office and things. Just the whole industry started to change. He ended up being bought out.

He was getting to retirement age, and he got bought out by another company that wanted to buy his name in the name of de Forest Research, and kept him on for a little bit. But then he was ready to retire. But the, Joan Pearce and some of the associates didn't really want to work for this new de Forest Research, so they went off and had their own research company. Both of them are still going. The main, Joan is no longer alive, but, a woman who worked for my father named Calista Carr now runs what they call Jim Pierce research , and they really are the ones who took over the de Forest report.

And that, format, which is. So it's it's a different industry. Glen and I were talking about it. I mean, now with the internet, a lot of the studios closed their libraries. I think my father answered this question, to Glen, which he never said to me about, Another thing that changed was, shows started to actually film more on location.

So they didn't rely on the studio to like, build sets and need all that art direction research. So the big part of the business now is really the legal clearance. And that's become the big contribution of what my, my father, did for the industry. And that's still going. And he really was the pioneer in doing that.

And I think was pretty important to the industry for that. Interesting. Thank you very much. And then I just have to ask, and I'm sure you're sick of this question. You've heard it your entire life, but, you know, of, Kellum de Forest and DeForest Kelley, sound an awful lot alike.

So did Did those two ever, chat about this joke about this? Yeah they did chat about it. And because of the proximity of the two locations, they would get mail for each other. I think my father would get, I mean, more DeForest Kelley got a lot more mail than my father, but it would sometimes be delivered to his office, but otherwise, it's a it's just a weird coincidence, Kelly. My father always went by Kellum, but I think there was a period that he was actually called Kelly as a nickname like.

And, but it was just a coincidence and I just recently I said, you know, why was DeForest Kelley named DeForest Kelley? Like, is he related, legacy somehow related? And it turned out that they, like his parents, like, read the name in a book. I think DeForest is also the middle. It's Humphrey Bogart's middle name is named Humphrey DeForest Bogart.

And I think what I read is that the that DeForest Kelly's parents like, read that. And they said, oh, that's a cool name. We're going to name him DeForest. So he there's no there's no relationship or anything. And, it just was one of these bizarre coincidences that they just happened to be, you know, virtually on, you know, working a block from each other and at the same time and they, they did they did meet and talk about it and joke about it and and one last question.

Then I think we'll break for the lobby. Non quite a question was just it was sort of a question. Were you aware you talk about NASA's interaction with Star Trek? Were you aware that 30 years ago, James Doohan spoke at our engineering colloquium here, and Barbara and I picked him up at the airport, the night before, we immediately went to go to a bar. And we we found one that was open, but, he packed the auditorium and you'd speak about the memorial symposium '67 when Leonard Nimoy was there and that, you know, he didn't have to speak or anything, but so we gave him a rest because he stayed a couple of days with us, and, it was his birthday.

And so we took him to a restaurant and had a big crowd. And, it was 72nd birthday, I think it was that he spoke at. And then the next day, just a personal thing. I picked him up at the hotel to bring him back to the airport. And then, we're sitting we're talking about Star Trek.

And at that particular moment, he was talking about, William Shatner and feelings between them. And, at the very end, as we're leaving and we've been with him on and off quite a bit. In fact, we went to the was they conference, the show that we went? Anyway, did you start planning at the very end as we we're getting on, he said, by the way, tell me, what do you do here? Okay.

And so I said, oh, that's the little bit of the ego part of the, the team. But that was, surprising because I'd been with him so long, he finally looking for something to say and asked who I was and what I did. That was delightful. We took him on tour of the center and all that, and he packed the auditorium, like I said, and it was a standing room only. And this is the bigger this auditorium, but the gymnasium, basically.

in building 8. So just a little side. I don't know if you had heard much about that visit or not. I, I heard about it. Ken was telling me, things about it as well.

And, you know, going back to the 1967 visit in my book, there were the the people here at Goddard were just amazed when Leonard Nimoy came here. I mean, the people were just lined up. I, you know, I would love to talk with someone else who is still around, but but, you know, we're going on 60 plus years, who perhaps was there at the time, but apparently he, you know, he was very well received, as is evident in the letter that he sent back when he toured the center here at Goddard. And, I don't know, maybe he might have spoken in this auditorium if this was here back that far or not. But, I haven't found a whole lot of information, you know, on it.

Other than what was published in the newsletter news, I think at that time, some stuff was in that lineup of crowds. But I do remember standing out. So we took him to lunch across the street, and we're sitting there and we can see people looking at the car going, he looks familiar. as they drove by. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. And I guess I'll close out by saying, you know, I've been a fan, like a number of us here in the audience since the beginning, since the original broadcast. So I like to think I know a lot about Star Trek, but just today and in starting to read your book over the weekend, it's insane the number of little tidbits of new information that are in there, that I had never heard of before, including a Gene Roddenberry variant of the Drake equation, estimating the amount of intelligent life in the universe. Even down to the degree that he pointed out, there are several variables, and they're raised to the power of one, which Roddenberry's is great, not perfect, but And anyways, thank you so much.

Wonderful presentation and great work. And Glen will be out in the lobby, with some books if you want to take a look.

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