Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Matt Jefferies, Enterprise Designer, Dies at 82

Donkeypuncher · 07-24-2003, 08:55 AM

Engineers, by and large, are science fiction fans. Of course those people are going to be sensitive to this guy's passing. Of course they admired his work and I'm not knocking that at all. Maybe they even got into their line of work because of a love of space that came from childhood dreaming spurred on by watching television sci-fi shows, but by the time those kids were old enough to thank Mr. Jefferies, we had already been in space for some time and dreaming of it for an even longer period. He didn't "influence" a damned thing in real-world NASA terms.

NASA, in its "glory days" as it was put, came far before the show was ever on the air. The lifting body program at Ames got under way in 1957, 11 years before the show ever freakin' aired. Dale Reed was designing things for NACA (and later, NASA) and dreaming of the stars when Roddenberry was making westerns on tv. Bruce Peterson, Chuck Yeager and Milt Thompson were pushing the envelope of Dale's designs before anyone ever uttered "Captain Kirk" and those guys were the real "space cowboys."

An old guy died of cancer. It's sad, but thousands of other old guys died of cancer that day, too. This guy's a deity because he designed some props for a tv show? Please...

Put your toy phasers down and back away slowly.

07-24-2003, 08:55 AM	#13 (permalink)
Donkeypuncher Psycho Location: Pasadena, CA	Engineers, by and large, are science fiction fans. Of course those people are going to be sensitive to this guy's passing. Of course they admired his work and I'm not knocking that at all. Maybe they even got into their line of work because of a love of space that came from childhood dreaming spurred on by watching television sci-fi shows, but by the time those kids were old enough to thank Mr. Jefferies, we had already been in space for some time and dreaming of it for an even longer period. He didn't "influence" a damned thing in real-world NASA terms. NASA, in its "glory days" as it was put, came far before the show was ever on the air. The lifting body program at Ames got under way in 1957, 11 years before the show ever freakin' aired. Dale Reed was designing things for NACA (and later, NASA) and dreaming of the stars when Roddenberry was making westerns on tv. Bruce Peterson, Chuck Yeager and Milt Thompson were pushing the envelope of Dale's designs before anyone ever uttered "Captain Kirk" and those guys were the real "space cowboys." An old guy died of cancer. It's sad, but thousands of other old guys died of cancer that day, too. This guy's a deity because he designed some props for a tv show? Please... Put your toy phasers down and back away slowly. __________________ "take me down, little Susie, take me down I know you think you're the Queen of The Underground" Last edited by Donkeypuncher; 07-24-2003 at 10:19 AM..