He's dead, Jim.

My friend Mike just e-mailed me the bad news: Scotty is dead, Jim. The passing of one of the great accents of our time bears a great burden for our society. How can we go on in his absence? I don't think I can hold 'er much longer, cap'n.
Star Trek conventions were already getting a little sparse. Bones is gone. Sarek/Romulan Commander has passed on. Even Captain Kirk has moved to VH-1. The United Federation of Planets is feeling it down deep, where no man has gone before.
Still, how many times did Montgomery Scott save the galactic bacon of the starship Enterprise and all those who served upon her carpeted decks? He was asked to do the impossible week after week, and later when he moved to the big screen, he had to design a transparent aluminum tank and transport two humpback whales into it - all the while dealing with faulty Klingon wiring. He wasn't simply an engineer - he was a magician.
If Engineer Scott were alive today (I know, just a little while ago he was - but...) he most certainly could have gotten the space shuttle off the pad and back into space where she belongs. He had a much deeper and abiding love for his ship than his captain. Kirk was always looking for ways to trade his machine in for the lives of his crew. He was a real "people person." Scotty never got himself blasted so that he had to be brought back to life by some miracle of imagined physics. He was at his post, waiting for the next ridiculous order. Scott was never happier than when things were at their worst - mechanically speaking. Kirk would make some hair-brained suggestion, and Spock would always back him up. Scotty just had to make do - "Warp 10? Aye sir, I'll do my best." Back to work, Scotty.