If we are going to build a ship from fiction, we probably should start with the Discovery One from 2001.
Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
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Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#12Maybe this is a joke and I'm taking it too seriously, but doesn't the Enterprise run on antimatter? I don't think we're going to be able to manufacture antimatter in large quantities in the next 20 years.
The Enterprise runs on Westinghouse nuclear reactors burning enriched U-235 (93%+). Also, the quoted price tag here seems steep when you could, quite literally, build the USS Enterprise 52 years ago for $451.3 million USD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
:P
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#13Maybe this is a joke and I'm taking it too seriously, but doesn't the Enterprise run on antimatter? I don't think we're going to be able to manufacture antimatter in large quantities in the next 20 years.
The faster than speed of light thing'll be hard aswell.
No worries, we'll just reverse the phase polarity.
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#14There's a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason. But if you peel away the "let's build the Enterprise!" specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound.
A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what's worse... we can't even DO the cool stuff we could do in 69!
If you had asked someone in 69 what spaceflight would look like in 2012, they would probably have visions of Moon bases, space stations with gravity wheels, and routine manned trips to Mars.
But we have none of those things. Instead, we have a recently-retired space truck, a space station that looks like a larger version of Skylab, and all of this stuck in low Earth orbit.
How. Incredibly. Disappointing.
I want to get excited about space again. I really, really do. The recent gains made by private companies (with Scaled Composites in '04 and SpaceX today) have helped a lot. But we shouldn't shy away from bigger ideas.
I know it sounds silly to people in the space business, but the public could really use some futuristic looking space ships and more exciting missions to get excited again.
In the end, I believe that private industry will make this happen once space tourism becomes more affordable (simply because the different companies will have to start competing on something other than "look, we're in space!").
Bigger, cooler looking space ships that are built in orbit and make regular trips to and from Mars would be REALLY exciting. It doesn't have to look like the Enterprise. What about a small Klingon Bird of Prey or even a UFO-style flying saucer?
So, no, we don't need to build the Enterprise, but we DO need to take this as a marketing lesson about why the public seems to yawn when they hear anything about space and Nasa these days.
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#15I'd rather spend the money replacing our fragile and short lived meat sacks first. Building massive space ships to sling us across the universe is a problem which only exists when we have meat sacks.
Voyager 1 and 2 have done well with ancient technology and no meat sacks.
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#16A trillion dollars is $50 billion per year over 20 years. From the site: “It is proposed that the US dedicate .27% of its GDP each year to the NASA Enterprise program. To get some sense of what spending .27% of the GDP each year will mean, consider that between 1963 and 1972, during the Apollo era, the US spent on average .50% of GDP per year as shown in the center column in the table to the right. This is about doub…
Congratulations on copy and pasting from tptacek's link.
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#17There's a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason. But if you peel away the "let's build the Enterprise!" specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound. A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s. The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what's worse... w…
> A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s
So the solution is to build a ship based on a design from 1965?
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#18If we build a space elevator for 10-20 billion USD, it would bring down the cost of building the USS Enterprise (and really, all space construction) vastly. I think a space elevator is a better thing to build!
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#19Ho Hum. What we need to do is sample return from the moon's north pole and see if there really is a glacier there!
Good one! Nasa is dreaming about Mars and still cannot go to moon yet :D
Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD
#20I love the idea that someone is dreaming this big; as others have said this is clearly a terrible way to go about space exploration, though.
Building X 'because we can' is never as good as building X 'because then we can do Y'. Planetary Resources have it exactly right - find an economic imperative to go into space, and ingenuity will follow.