Not everything we do here at COTTonLINE has to be deadly serious. Carl M. Cannon has written a fun column for RealClearPolitics concerning the way the first NASA space shuttle came to be named the Enterprise.
As Cannon reports, the original name NASA picked for the shuttle was the Constitution. It turns out that Star Trek fans wrote thousands of letters and generally lobbied hard for the name Enterprise. And our President at the time, former sailor Gerald Ford, was heard to say he favored the Enterprise name.
Intriguing side note: the Enterprise never flew in space. She was essentially a developmental prototype.
