The AE-35 Unit brought us, in
2001: A Space Odyssey, the
quintessential Serious Aerospace Engineer phrase, when Bowman and Poole report on their plan to bring it in for analysis. Mission Control, in the form of a crew-cut, black-spectacles type, says in a lilting monotonal, "
ROger your plan to replace
Alpha
Echo Thr
ee-Five unit."
On another useless trivia cant, there is homage paid to this film in Star Trek: First Contact using this designation - when Picard, Worf and Lt. Hawk (thanks C-Dawg!) head outside onto the USS Enterprise-E's hull to stop the Borg from converting the main sensor dish into a giant communications device, the display screens which they are using to unlatch the dish all show the designation "AE-35" in large characters.