Brid-Aine Parnell works the Star Trek angle on the appointment of former NASA astronaut Dr Mae Jemison as the head of the 100-year Starship project:
The agency had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication, and has not yet announced the appointment publicly.
Dr Jemison, who has a degree in chemical engineering and a doctorate in medicine, was the science mission specialist on the STS-47 Spacelab-J in 1992 and logged over 190 hours in space.
As well as being a bona fide boffin, Jemison also spent time in the IT trenches, working in computer programming, among other things, before joining NASA.
She’s also no stranger to the ideas behind a starship, since, as a long-time Star Trek fan, she had a bit part in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The episode, entitled Second Chances, must surely go down as evidence of her remarkable patience and forbearance, since it featured the two most irritating TNG characters, Commander Riker and Deanna Troi, rather prominently.
