Recently, I started thinking that the Star Trek movie, Generations was relevant to the life of Thomas Ray. I think other events that occurred to Thomas Ray in the months before the movies release have some bearing on the movie. I started thinking about this more when I saw the recent "Superman Returns." After I saw that recent movie, I realized how similar were some scenes to some thoughts I had been having. I had been exploring a train of thought were Thomas Ray was the military pilot for an aircraft that launches rockets into orbit. The aircraft was a Lockheed L-1011 and the rocket was called Pegasus. The aircraft was nicknamed "Stargazer" after the first starship of "Captain Picard" in ST:TNG. I believe that Patrick Stewart is Thomas Ray's father and his mother is the late Maureen Reagan.
Similar to "Superman Returns," there was problem when the Ten-Eleven was about to launch the spacecraft it was carrying. My theory is that in Thomas Ray's life, the Pegasus rocket was attached to the underside of the aircraft. Something went wrong though and I am not sure yet what are the details. Sometimes I think the Pegasus rocket dropped off and exploded, which knoocked out the engines and part of a wing while the aircraft was at 40,000 feet. This theory was reinforced a few days ago when I read a transcript of the pilot episode of "Lost" and the character "Jack" explained the aircraft was at 40,000 feet when it began breaking apart. Another theory is that the rocket fired, but was still attached to the plane, taking both of craft higher into the atmosphere, possibly as high as 23 miles, before the rocket exploded or came loose, leaving the Ten-Eleven to plummet to Earth. My theory is that Thomas Ray was the only survivor of the crash, possibly on some island or rain forest. The scene is similar to the opening of "Unbreakable" where Bruce Willis' character is the only survivor of the train wreck. I believe Bruce Willis is one of Thomas Ray's brothers. I have wrote more about this in my journal, but it seems to leave me feeling more upset than I can explain.
As for "Generations," I think the opening sequence on the Enterprise-B represents Thomas Ray's experiences on the Columbia on April 14, 1981. 4/14/81 was a Tuesday, a detail that shows up in the movie. In my journal, I compared how the Columbia could be considered the Enterprise-B because the first space shuttle to travel through the atmosphere and land on Earth was actually the space shuttle Enterprise. It had 5 flights in the atmosphere according to this list, before the Columbia was launched into space on 4/12/81. I also wrote of how the shuttle heat tiles could symbolize a primitive "Deflector Array" in the Star Trek sense. The purpose is to deflect heat away from the shuttle. My theory, based on some information I found, is that Thomas Ray repaired a problem with the shuttle's landing gear that had been caused by heating and melting during re-entry on 4/14/81, some problem with the tiles around the landing gear. In the movie, Kirk disappeared just after fixing the problem and saving the ship. I think the same thing happened to Thomas Ray. He fixed some kind of problem with an uplock roller, but when the door opened, he fell through. I assume he had some kind of static line rigged up which deployed his parachute. I found this video from NASA that is interesting. About 17 seconds into the mpeg version of the video, just before the landing gear starts going down, I can see something flash underneath the shuttle. It looks like smoke, but I am wondering if that was Thomas Ray's parachute deploying. I don't know. I wish I knew what it all meant.
By the way, in my last year at Microsoft, they had a woman named Ramona working with me. There was Ilan Ramon from the Osirak strike. There was even a guy on my team who told me he used to work for NASA. I can't remember his name. He told me something about our manager telling him that he was brave for traveling all the way across country to take that job on our team. Later, that guy Jeremy Rule, who looks like "Wesley Crusher" became our "Acting Manager."
