Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience' at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: A sneak peek

 

Trekkies, rejoice!
You can now fulfill your lifelong dream of joining the Starfleet Academy as a cadet at the new "Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience," which opens at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on July 9.
To commemorate the franchise’s 50th anniversary, The Intrepid museum will also host “Star Trek” movie nights, summer camps, astronomy nights and “operation slumbers” (overnight museum stays) throughout the summer. The Paley Center for Media will also showcase the original 2-D and 3-D art exhibit, “Star Trek: 50 Artists. 50 Years.”
The "Starfleet Academy Experience," produced by EMS Entertainment in collaboration with the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, features a series of interactive tasks to help you navigate the academy’s recruitment process.
Scroll down for a sneak peek of the academy.

You'll be given a rubber radio-frequency identification (RFID) bracelet that wraps around like a watch. This is your key to gaining access to all activities in the exhibit. Don't lose it! 

Your first task as a Starfleet cadet will be a recruitment quiz, which asks a series of five questions that are a cinch for Trekkies. For almost every activity, you'll need to scan the RFID bracelet on top of the command division insignia so that your results from each activity will be temporarily saved and emailed to you. Talk about wearable technology.

A core part of the Starfleet Academy Experience is Career Day, in which you explore different career options as a cadet recruit, including engineering, navigation, communication, medical, tactical, command and science. (Somehow, I got engineering. This changes everything.) Each zone includes career descriptions and short, related clips from the "Star Trek" franchise.

You'll also go through some pretty intense phaser training in this 12,000-square-foot academy. Are you up to the challenge?

Fans will also recognize several displays of original costumes and props that were used in the movies, including technology like plasma pistols and wrist communicators that the creators of "Star Trek" had imagined for future centuries.
Because the "Star Trek" franchise -- from the 1966 original television series to the 2016 movie "Star Trek Beyond" -- spans several generations, children and grown-ups will both be able to enjoy the interactive exhibition, said Susan Marenoff-Zausner, president of the Intrepid museum.
Mike Massimino, 53, a former NASA astronaut and current adviser for the Intrepid museum's space programs, said that some of his first memories of television was of "Star Trek." He would watch the show with his brother on Friday nights in the '60s and then he'd watch the reruns later.
"I'm more of the original 'Star Trek' guy," said Massimino, who went on two space shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002 and 2009.
When the 2009 "Star Trek" movie was released on May 8, Massimino was getting ready for his second flight three days later.
"NASA reached out to Paramount and they were like, 'Oh, the astronauts aren't going to be able to watch your movie. They'll be in space,'" Massimino recalled. "So they signed an agreement to get us a copy ... so we actually watched the movie as a crew on board."
Watching "Star Trek" on space? Nothing could be more perfect.

Yes, that's actually George Takei, who made a special appearance at the exhibit. If you're wondering what the tubes surrounding him are for, the idea is that you'll get to project a full-body selfie into one of these tubes, where a hologram of yourself will appear. How cool is that?
Other innovative technologies from "Star Trek" include Leap Motion, planet projection mapping and a Medical Tricorder table with RFID sensors.
Takei told amNewYork that "Star Trek" is all about humans finding confidence in their ability to be creative and inventive, "to solve problems, to innovate, to research and put seeming opposites together."
"[It's about] this planet here, with people of many different races, cultures, fates, experiences, backgrounds coming together despite the differences, and seeing the differences as part of our strength and innovating together, inventing together, and boldly going where no one has gone before," Takei said with a chuckle.

Between target practice with phasers and communicating in Klingon, you'll want to check out the "Star Trek" timelines and Halls of Fame placed throughout the academy, featuring all of your favorite characters and a brief history of the "Star Trek" universe. 

Finally, before you complete training as a cadet recruit and leave the Starfleet Academy, you can't miss the opportunity to sit in the captain's chair -- situated right in the middle of the bridge from "The Next Generation" series. 

And there you have it: Star Trek's Starfleet Academy Experience. Needless to say, it's pretty out of this world.