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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

#41

Post by javert »

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 awesome space ships. Once that premise is accepted by society, it'll be all about wealth redistribution, healthcare, and regulation (and ultimately economic stagnation), and building space ships will be the last thing on anyone's mind.

This post also really bothers me because it's not like the public is a bunch of 4 year olds going "oooh, shiny." And if they are, we need to be finding ways to improve that problem, not playing to it. If society is that messed up, society is headed for the gutter anyway.

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

#43

Post by tomjen3 »

lumberjack wrote: post #28

Personally I don't see us achieving anything close to pop-sci space exploration fantasies when four fifths of our species are still struggling to survive day by day.

I used to think like you.

But we have been trying to solve that problem forever. It is not going to happen. Ever.

So might we not have fun as part of the 1/5 who make it to space?

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

#44

Post by pygorex »

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…

> 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 the ideal of manned spaceflight should remain in the 60's - at least for the foreseeable future. We are magnificently evolved to inhabit this planet. The remainder of the solar system is insanely hostile to our form of life. It's far more sensible to engineer machines that can act as our eyes & ears and extend our narrowly evolved senses to far-out and lethal environments.

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

#45

Post by smacktoward »

jasimq wrote: post #34
protomyth wrote: post #11

If we are going to build a ship from fiction, we probably should start with the Discovery One from 2001.

I would like some pod racers from Star Wars first.

Or just the landspeeders! Imagine the savings on highway maintenance if we all drove cars without wheels...

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

#46

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

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 they expected to use from Los Angeles, stay for a while and then go back to Los Angeles to reload with supplies. Now imagine there is a toll gate on I15 outside San Bernadino that charges you $100M to use the road between LA and Barstow. Now what kind of town would Barstow be? A ghost town.

Space, and low earth orbit in particular, is the same way. We don't have any infrastructure up there. Just a single campsite. Every time we launched the shuttle we took perfectly good fuel and burned it up in the atmosphere because we had no way to take the left overs from the external tank and store them in orbit. If you consider just that one problem, keeping fuel around. You see how far we are from living in space vs just visiting.

At $54M/pop SpaceX will make somethings a lot more accessible in space. Putting some infrastructure in space like a gas station and a space tug, will go a lot further.

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

#48

Post by rednum »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Here's NASASPACEFLIGHT.COM making fun of this: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28821.0

This thread is actually kinda sad. The guy seems to be full of passion, but doesn't have knowledge of actual engineering/science to do anything useful in that direction; (and seems to be unwilling to criticaly think and learn something, but that's another point). I wonder, if somebody set him in right direction when he was younger (think a good math teacher) would he work with those nasa guys now? It seems to me that true passion is a resource many tech communities could really use.

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

#49

Post by ginko »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
smacktoward wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to capture the imagination, you don't need a ship that looks snazzy. You need a ship that can safely and reliably take people to Earth orbit and back at a price normal people can afford. As long as space travel is the province of billionaires and test pilots only, nobody will care about it. What you need is a space DC-3.

> 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…

I personally didn't like the intros of Enterprise.

Partially because its tone didn't feel like a Star Trek intro, but mainly because it completely ignored the incredible achievements of the Soviet space program. You would at least expect a shot of Yuri Gagarin.

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

#50

Post by pygorex »

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.
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