chills ✨

They’re such a small background thing, rarely even mentioned by name. But you can see the thought put into it. Of course TOS would have shuttles named after Galileo and Copernicus, but the names just get better as the show goes.

TNG had a Marie Curie shuttle AND one named after Farouk El-Baz, a man who worked on the Apollo program (and plenty of others, Einstein, Hawking, Feynman, JFK and also Indiana jones for some reason, they also had Pike but I’m focusing on real scientists)

Voyager had Sacajawea and Tereshkova (first woman in space)

The Jemison (first woman of color in space, also appeared in an episode of TNG) is mentioned in Picard

Attempt #2, looking promising?

That alien?

Oh that’s Mick Fleetwood

What about this random vorta?

Iggy pop, for some reason

This guy?

Is also that guy

The fucking rock showing up in voyager and getting his ass handed to him

And who could forget