United space ship Enterprise.
I guess they hadn’t nailed down the terminology yet.
I like “Earthman” James T. Kirk
Lol. Nice. I missed that until I read your comment.
I’ve read that it was pretty important to the publicity team to clarify that Spock is definitely an alien and not in any way a demon.
Yeah, I heard that he was originally written to be red-skinned and devilish-looking from Mars, but they changed it to Vulcan last minute.
Some of the early scripts, especially comments by Dr. McCoy, seem to fit the original description.
Looks like that was the full version of the acronym for most of TOS
USS was referred to as standing for either “United Space Ship” (TOS: “The Cage”, “The Menagerie, Part I”, “Space Seed”, “The Gamesters of Triskelion”, “Patterns of Force”, “Assignment: Earth”, “Elaan of Troyius”) or “United Star Ship.” (TOS: “The Squire of Gothos”, “Court Martial”)
Interesting that a rocket seems to be firing from the shuttle bay.
I have an original paperback that uses this same artwork