Roddenberry's Legacy
Star Trek is one of the most culturally-influential television shows, and is often regarded as the most influential science fiction TV series in history. The original series, which aired in the late 1960s, has since spawned five successor series, twelve movies, a plethora of merchandise, and a multi-billion dollar industry collectively known as the Star Trek franchise. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek in 1964 to NBC as a classic adventure drama, calling it a "Wagon Train to the Stars". But Roddenberry wanted to tell more sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for current problems on Earth and showing how they could be rectified through humanism and optimism. The show's writers frequently addressed moral and social issues such as slavery, warfare, and discrimination. During its network run from 1966 to 1969, TOS' ratings were mediocre, and TOS was finally canceled after its third season.After its cancellation, through reruns Star Trek became more popular and reached a much wider audience than when it had originally aired. Known as "trekkies" or "trekkers", the show's fans formed clubs and organized conventions. - wikipedia
QUESTION FOR FINAL COORDINATES: In what year did a fan-organized letter-writing campaign convince NASA to name its first space shuttle orbiter, Enterprise, after the fictional Star Trek ship?
A. 1973 - N39 23.811 W087 25.653
B. 1969 - N39 23.765 W087 25.546
C. 1983 - N39 23.652 W087 25.787
D. 1976 - N39 23.950 W087 25.715