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Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

buildtheenterprise.org

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Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#81

Post by stcredzero »

breckinloggins wrote: post #14

There'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…

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.

The lesson is: "Sell them what they want, but deliver them what they need."

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#82

Post by Dn_Ab »

drostie wrote: post #56
gouranga wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. If you ever read Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, that's what we'll end up as at some point in the near future. It starts with google goggles, proceeds to more integration and then becomes us. I wouldn't say no to assimilation when I think about it.

I remember a great comment from a talk by John Searle about the scariest way that this could happen. Imagine that you get just such an implant, and suddenly, you just feel woozy or tired, as if something is really going royally wrong, as if your consciousness is no longer really "in control." The Doctor starts the checkup and says "how do you feel?" and you internally think, "lousy! I need you to remove it, get it ou…

I tend to find Searle's discussions on AI to be overly simplistic. I find that scenario highly unlikely. Regardless of how you choose to interpret the research on the neuroscience of where decisions to action originate, it is clear that the conscious mind is extremely good at taking full credit for events it had no part or only a partial role in.

Such an "AI parasite" has plenty of machinery inbuilt in the brain to take advantage of in order to have full control without causing dissonance in the host. Indeed, not only will it likely be a path of least resistance, continued dissonance may cause enough mental instability in the host as to disrupt some emergent balance in the brain. This would have an overall negative effect on the user AI as to motivate it to choose to not make the extra effort required to have the human suffer such a disconnect.

The question then would be in whether thinking of the AI as other is valid instead of expanding the notion of personal agency to accept such symbiotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Manip...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#The_p...

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#83

Post by pdonis »

Has anyone found a calculation in the specs of whether the power requirements given are sufficient to produce the required thrust, given the total mass of the ship? Here's what I come up with (rough numbers):

Ship mass: 85,000 metric tons, or 85 million kg.

Effective exhaust velocity: 150,000 m/s (1 g, or 10 m/s^2, times the quoted specific impulse of 15,000 s)

This implies a power requirement of 75,000 Watts per Newton of thrust--half the effective exhaust velocity, since we're in the non-relativistic regime. For details, see for example here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse

Thrust required: 1.7 million Newtons (quoted mass above times 0.002g, or 0.02 Newtons/kg)

Total power required for thrust: 130 billion Watts, or 130 Gigawatts, or more than 50 times the power quoted in the specs.

Am I missing something, or will this ship need 50 sets of reactors to power its engines?

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#84

Post by kitsune_ »

mahyarm wrote: post #70
gouranga wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society already does a good job of this without the need for technology or artificial intelligence. I'd genuinely rather spend my day chopping wood, picking fruit or fishing, but no, I'm chained to a desk in front of Visual Studio 2010 pumping out code to prop up the insurance industry. I still don't know why I do it. Something has taken me over and it's not artificially intelligent electronics.

Change jobs, at least you don't have to prop up the insurance industry anymore.

Currently, we're all propping up the insurance industry - There's no escape.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#85

Post by wtracy »

civilian wrote: post #58
theorique wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a space elevator cost only $10-20B? Burj Khalifa, a half-mile high building cost $1-2B already. Hard to imagine a space elevator costing only 10-20x the price of the world's tallest building. A space elevator would presumably need to use a range of as yet non-existent and/or unproven technologies (very long carbon nanotube ropes, etc).

Yeah. I think the 10-20b is based off of stronger carbon nanotubes. But I think we have strong enough nanotubes at the moment. However, the stronger they get, the fewer we have to use, and the cheaper it will be.

My understanding is that they are now strong enough, but we can't make them long enough. We have no way to "weld" them together after their creation to make longer tubes without sacrificing their integrity.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#87

Post by wtracy »

hwillis wrote: post #54

Fun fact: that 100MW laser is in "cut the ISS in half in a fraction of a second" territory. 5KW lasers are used for cutting through 1/4" aluminum.

And this guy still wants it to have one-minute sustained output. He hasn't provided anything that I consider a compelling reason for this.

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#88

Post by twelvechairs »

stcredzero wrote: post #76
ChuckMcM wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a huge fan of space I agree we need progress, but we can achieve that by no longer 'visiting' space and instead 'moving' there. I was talking with a JPL engineer about SpaceX and he said something which really knocked me for a loop. He said "We don't live in space, we camp there." And by example he suggested what if there was no food, fuel, or running water in Barstow California. Everyone would have to carry what…

Back in 1988, a Canadian scientist was commissioned by a 2nd world power to build a system that could be used for orbital launch 4 orders of magnitude cheaper per pound to orbit than what SpaceX can do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon It would have involved firing payloads out of a very large cannon, then firing a rocket onboard to circularize the orbit, so this is not for manned launch, but we should be…

Great post, but '2nd world' is not the right description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_world

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#89

Post by JabavuAdams »

This is stupid. The real thing is happening right now, but it doesn't look futuristic enough.

What we need in space now is infrastructure. Unsexy, boxy, gantried infrastructure.

Why can't I get HD video from the moon without pointing a 20m dish there?

Re: Build the "USS Enterprise" in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD

#90

Post by mchanson »

breckinloggins wrote: post #14

There'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…

The public was not that excited about space in the 60s either.

http://si.academia.edu/RogerLaunius/Papers/93299/_Public_Opi...

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