Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Starship Smackdown" speech

[shivkala]

In this year's "Starship Smackdown," astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gave an impassioned speech describing which starship he perfers. His answer was eventually agreed upon by the audience and the panel of judges.

It not only shows, once again how awesome Neil deGrasse Tyson is, but also how awesome the original Enterprise was.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyUN5vG1T8k[/yt]

 

[Cyke101]

My God, I just got tingles.

 

[The Wormhole]

That man clearly knows his stuff!

 

[barnaclelapse]

"My boy is wicked-smart."

 

[Gary7]

He is so on the money. Context is everything. When the NCC-1701 took off across our screens for the very first time, it was so incredibly impressive and so compellingly functional unlike anything we'd ever seen before. It was the benchmark starship that all others would be compared against. Of course today in the Star Trek universe of 5 TV series and numerous movies, it looks a bit dated when silhouetted against the "E", but in my mind nothing has ever made quite the same deep impression that the original did. The only spacecraft that comes close (IMHO) is the Discovery One from 2001, but that's rooted in such a very different timeline that it's not a fair comparison.