Wagon Train To The Stars
Wagon Train To The Stars was Originally Posted on December 20, 2014 by lavarock
It was described as “Wagon Train To The Stars”. It was a similar concept to the TV show Wagon Train, where a long trip was broken up each week with a new adventure and new guest cast members, except in space.
When the concept was hawked to the studios, they turned it down as they could not envision how far-reaching the show would become.
We now know that Star Trek was more than a TV show. It forecast our future.
Gene Roddenberry was an accomplished writer and had an idea for a space adventure series. The series, although science-fiction, had some fact blended in. Gene actually went to scientists and NASA to ensure that there was some reality in what he proposed. That fact hit me when I bought and read commercial materials from the show. There was a set of ship plans you would delve into. They included floor plans of each deck and you could envision the ship between the TV views and the plans. Not shown on TV but shown in the documentation, was the location of the bathroom relative to the Captains Chair. Shown in one episode was the hydroponics lab, where the crew could grow actual plants in space.
In the book of plans was the “communicator”, a hand-held device. There were plans for a simple communicator using todays technology and there was a frequency listed. When you investigated that frequency, it turns out to be a real radio band allocated to “earth/Space” communications. There was that attention to detail.
Food came from a replicator where molecules were rearranged. Replicators could also create parts. There was also a way to transport people and things across space. As crazy as those ideas seemed at the time, we are doing that today. Todays news included the idea that we “replicated” a wrench and transported it across space. NASA engineers took a wrench, scanned it and sent the information via radio to the International Space Station, where it was recreated with their 3-D printer.
Another idea used extensively in the series and movies was the idea of a TriCorder where you could do a lot of engineering or medical tests on something. Now we use a cellphone which communicates and contains GPS to determine location, a camera to record, built-in X-Y-Z axis sensors to determine direction and tilt. Yes, my cellphone also has a level app to check for level. I can also use the metal detector function to find metal things dropped in the grass.
There are other items in the show which now have a parallel in our lives. According to Wikipedia:
The Star Trek franchise created by Roddenberry has produced story material for almost five decades; resulting in six television series consisting of 726 episodes, and twelve feature films. A thirteenth film is in production, and is expected to be released in 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry
It was all made possible due to the foresight of Lucy and Desi Arnez!
http://badassdigest.com/2013/09/08/how-lucille-ball-made-star-trek-happen/