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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

#101

Post by andrewflnr »

smacktoward wrote: post #39
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need a ship that can safely and reliably take people to Earth orbit and back at a price normal people can afford. That's what needs to be actually built, but it's not how human imagination works. To capture imagination, you make people watch this: http://youtu.be/_yijcWsLda8?hd=1&t=9s or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DEw70LVWs You need to touch the heart, connect with people's desires, emotions and dre…

What captures peoples' imaginations isn't the vehicle. It is the journey. Or, more importantly, the destination. The vehicle is just the can they sit in to get there. People (the vast majority, anyway) don't travel because they like to travel. They travel because they want to get somewhere. What excites their imagination is the thought of being at that place , not how they got there. Part of the reason people aren't…

You havw to remember that in the imagination, the vehicle is a large part of the journey. Having a nice one definitely helps, or car styling wouldn't matter so much. Beautiful vehicles will definitely help.

So you're left with the question of which helps more: a beautiful/sexy vehicle, or safety and cheapness, the answer is basically one of detailed analysis. I suspect you're right about where the balance leans, but I also suspect it's possible to have both.

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

#102

Post by twelvechairs »

stcredzero wrote: post #97
twelvechairs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually, I know this and this wikipedia entry. It's hard to for me to classify Iraq. For awhile they were another totalitarian state with ties to the Soviet Union. For awhile they were more in the US orbit. I guess that would put them in the 3rd world, though economically they have been in a different class than the poorest 3rd world nations. I was thinking of terming them a "second rate power."

Yeah - Sorry I know its a bit nitpicky, because "second world" is pretty commonly understood in this way (to mean "secondary power"/"partially developed economy" etc.) but although common it is really a bit of a misuse of a word that has a very specific original meaning and I thought its probably worth pointing out to people (not just you) where the differences lie.

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

#103

Post by qq66 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #8

I hate hate hate this idea. It's so very wrong headed. Yes, it'd certainly help bootstrap manned spaceflight. But I talked to someone who knows about these things and he told me a secret, no matter HOW you spend a trillion dollars on a space project you're going to do a hell of a lot to bootstrap spaceflight. We don't need this, it's silly, we should not be taking it seriously. We already have the technology and the…

SpaceX will not have 10 million people living on Mars in eighteen years, whether you gave them a contract for $1 trillion or $10 trillion or $100 quadrillion.

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

#104

Post by drewrv »

javert wrote: post #41
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…

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. Who cares what the public "could use"? This is a self-defeating argument because you're starting with the premise that the govnermnet ought to be in the business of making people excited/happy, and then argue that therefore, we should build awesom…

Getting people excited about space travel isn't the goal, it's a means to an end. The end goal is investment in new research, technologies, and education, which will help the economy and improve the wellbeing of society. Getting people excited about space travel can create the political will to accomplish those things.

I'm not saying we should spend billions on pointless feel good projects, but if painting the space shuttle silver or making a robotic probe slightly anthropomorphic would convince hundreds of thousands of grade schoolers to stay in school and do lots of math, I think it's worth it.

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

#105

Post by zephjc »

wtracy wrote: post #87
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.

Romulans

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

#106

Post by toong »

Besides the technical and ideological objections, no one seems to be mentioning that 1 trillion USD just won't cut it ?

Those few new shiny F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will cost "an estimated $1 trillion to develop, purchase and support through 2050"

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/f35-budget-disaster/

And you expect to build the frickin' USS Enterprise for 1 trillion ?

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

#107

Post by yaix »

There is a DARPA financed project called the "100 Years Space Ship", that's the real Enterprice building project.

http://100yss.org/

Mission Statement: "100 Year Starship will pursue national and global initiatives, and galvanize public and private leadership and grassroots support, to assure that human travel beyond our solar system and to another star can be a reality within the next century."

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

gouranga wrote: post #69
dullcrisp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that building new meat sacks is a much more difficult problem than slinging meat sacks into space? It's like wanting to rewrite an entire operating system from scratch instead of fixing a difficult driver bug (terrible analogy, I know).

Personally, I think that slinging meat sacks into space without breaking them or letting them rot is harder than building a new operating environment. The meat bit isn't all that useful so we need to get rid of it. In fact it's a pain in the arse. The thing that is superposed on top of the meat is the important bit, you know like CDs don't really matter but the data (music) does. Imagine if you had 1000 hands that wo…

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by jeffbcross »

pygorex wrote: post #50
gouranga wrote: post #15

I'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.

Agreed. The future of spaceflight belongs to engineered beings - be they artificial machines (androids), genetically-modified humans or some combination of the two.

Yeah, androids can endure the lengthy flights without getting bored...unless we make them too human-like.
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