In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek this year, I thought it appropriate to see what we can learn as engineers from this enduring sci-fi franchise. Fiction often precedes real-life innovations, since it is humanity’s desire to create that inherently moves technology forward; much of what was imagined in Star Trek 50 years ago is reality today. The communicators in the show are a prime example: Being able to communicate wirelessly through a handheld device, once the stuff of science fiction, is an integral part of our daily lives in the 21st century.

Star Trek brought us many pioneering ideas that designers have acted upon, and we can glean a few engineering bits of wisdom from this iconic show.

Tip One: Don’t let yourself be a red shirt -- sometimes that happens when someone in sales promises a due date you can’t possibly meet. See my Design News article, ”How to Set A Realistic Delivery Date for Your Project.”

Tip Two: Never stop having fun in your work. I will never forget watching the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode entitled “11001001” (circa 1988). I was so excited about the aliens that were called Bynars, specifically how their brain patterns worked in zeros and ones, as binary numbers do in computing (I was learning to program in assembly at the time), and that their buffers stored data -- good fun and solid science fiction that was based on binary code. Call me a geek, but I thought it was really cool.

[Learn more design trends and the latest developments at Pacific Design & Manufacturing, Feb. 9-11, at the Anaheim Convention Center.]

Tip Three: The Star Trek prologue is iconic: “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Be bold in seeking out new technology and better, more efficient methods. Explore strange new methods. Don’t be afraid to innovate.

Tip Four: You, like Scotty, will often be asked to provide “more power” and to provide engineering miracles to save the day. Learn from Scotty; he had much wisdom to share in how he responded through the years:

During the Enterprise crew’s first look at the USS Excelsior, Sulu said: “She’s supposed to have transwarp.” Scotty replied: “Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.” (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). While Scotty is understandably unimpressed by Sulu’s observation regarding Excelsior’s supposed engineering advancements, you probably want to rephrase a skeptical response in this type of situation to something that is a little more diplomatic.