NEWPORT NEWS, Va. Out my window at Huntington Ingalls Industries, I can see the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ever built.
She is the eighth United States naval vessel to bear that name, dating back to the Continental Navy sloop-of-war that served in Lake Champlains Battle of Quebec in 1775.
Even the Star Trek Enterprise was named for her. She is decommissioned now, but for a half-century, she was Americas sharpest spear at the Cuban Missile Crisis, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf.