Are you a Trekkie, or Jedi, you are?

Luke Skywalker or James T. Kirk? The Rebel Alliance or the United Federation of Planets? Lightsaber or phaser? “It really is a hard choice to make,” says Grant Imahara. “Even though many may think I’m biased toward Star Wars since I worked on R2-D2 as a model maker with George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, I see a co-existence here. I feel both Star Wars and Star Trek have their place in the overall universe and each in its own right has inspired many engineers to push that technology envelope and advance us to where we are in many of our space programmes today.”

Grant posed the question during a recent video interview (watch it below) with five influential leaders in space exploration, filmed aboard the set of the webseries Star Trek Continues. Now it’s up to the engineering community and the general public to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

The Star Wars vs. Star Trek Poll is a fun way for the engineering community and the general public to delve into the Space Exploration Series presented as part of the Empowering Innovation Together programme, which allows engineers to connect with Grant and Mouser through innovation and creativity that defines engineering design.

In the video, Grant asks the leaders at Mars One, Bobak Ferdowsi (known as 'Mohawk guy'), executives from Teledyne Brown Engineering and Astrobotic Technology and Mouser’s own President and CEO, Glenn Smith, which they feel reigns supreme: Star Wars or Star Trek.

“To me, Star Trek came first, but it was Star Wars where I really saw space in a movie theater for the first time,” remarked Glenn Smith as he sat aboard the Enterprise’s bridge. “I can’t really choose between the two of them; I just have to have both.”

This mixed view held true with many of the space exploration leaders, but the one thread that seemed to come through from leaders such as Systems Engineer and Mars expert Bobak Ferdowsi, as well as John Horack, VP of Space Systems from Teledyne Brown Engineering, was placing Star Trek on a higher pedestal when it came to the true vision of what space exploration is all about. To them, Star Trek was "the future they wanted to be a part of,” showing a “compelling view of how humanity could go into space and the reasons we go into space today.”

So the choice is yours. Vote now and have your say on which universe reigns supreme - and see what other engineers had to say.