Are you proud to be associated with a TV show that�s inspired so many people to take a technical science career?

I�m enormously proud of the fact that Star Trek has really not just sparked an interest, but encouraged, a few generations of people to go into the sciences.

Case in point, my friend Mae Jameson, the first African American woman in space. Mae Carol Jameson became first a scientist and then an astronaut because of her love for Star Trek, seeing Nichelle Nichols on the bridge of the Enterprise really inspired her. As it did me when I was a kid.

I read a lot of science fiction books when I was a kid. And very few of them had heroes of colour in the pages of those novels. There were some, but they were the exceptions and so that�s why Gene Roddenberry�s vision of the future was really important to me growing up because it said when the future comes, there will be people like you who are vital and important to that mission of going out there and boldly exploring. After becoming a scientist and an astronaut flying on the Shuttle, we brought Mae in to be a transporter officer in a scene so that she could sort of complete that circle in her life.