Starship Enterprise could be a reality by 2032, engineer says

reply to post by Havick007


I think Planetary Resources could use a starship like this.

They could build it faster in pieces on the ground.

Then assemble it in space.

reply to post by elevatedone

Excellent idea, the design is a bit wrong, ok its a lot wrong totally wrong and wasteful. But hey at least some nutter nerds are seriously thinking on trying things, and by 2023 they might need to push the date back on that a lot as well for any meaningful deep space enterprise. And if they are actually serious I do not think it would look and function anything like the Starship Enterprise, but you never know as one thing always leads to another.

I was never that much of a fan of the whole Star Trek series as I always thought it was a bit silly, that and being stuck in a can in space with weird mutated humans and a white pasty robot/cyborg seemed like it would not be all that fun. That and the uniforms they have are way to laughable to be actually running around and doing things in it, oh that #s got to change. And were wasting $$, time and effort on a thousand other useless things, so might as well waste it on space travel going around the universe meting new and interesting aliens and blowing them up, oh and there moons, since we cant blow this moon up we can always blow other moons up. Given good cause to do so that is... So relax.

Never was much for the whole space travel thing as it got a billion holes in it the way they depict it on the tube and in the stories and theories. But now a days I'm starting to come around to the idea, and if in some far flung future we do something like the whole star trek concept, then my only question will be were do I sign up.

reply to post by big_BHOY


You are right it is a bit of a waste with all the probes etc.
Watching and seeing is ok, but we need to be OUT THERE, not stuck on this crowded planet...

Originally posted by namehere
reply to post by big_BHOY

 

with the right power source a space craft with ion drives could reach mars in 3 to 6 months.

To slow, way to slow, could be a passenger cruise craft or the trucks of the galaxy caring cargo back and forth between main colonies and such at that speed.

Originally posted by WatchRider
reply to post by big_BHOY

 

You are right it is a bit of a waste with all the probes etc.
Watching and seeing is ok, but we need to be OUT THERE, not stuck on this crowded planet...

Eventually, 100,000 people will be living on Earths moon.

- Tourism & Helium 3 -

---------
Also advertising? Can you imagine a huge blue Apple logo during a full moon?

reply to post by elevatedone

My first thoughts are, would they build it on Earth and it could fly into space or would they build these in space?

My first thoughts are if this guy can build one, who's to say something like this hasn't already been built by the powers that be.
Which means that we've all been lied to about the space program.
That's the conspiracy portion of my brain talking.

Apart from that, yea this is way too cool

i hate these types of threads. they get my hopes up! im so impatient. i want to be blissfully ignorant until its time to cut the ribbon!

Aliens watch out TV transmissions in space.
See that Star Trek is a weekly series for human entertainment.
No big.
Decide to visit us.
Get to Earth and see that baby orbiting the planet.
Priceless.

Nonsense idea
Not the idea of building a giant spacecraft that can...sort of float around earth, but the design.

I am a trekkie mind you, but there is a couple key components missing from our current tech, one big one that makes the whole project made of fail is the artificial gravity.

Solution, spin the deck...why? what a insane waste of space.

You want something functional, cool, and able to work in segments, look at mass effect's citadel as a model.
Spin that sucker and you got 5 major wings totally functional for gravity..and it can be built in segments. Built the inner ring, get colonists and workers living aboard within a few years, then you build on from there year by year, decade by decade. Functional, good looking, expandable, and serves the purpose.

Would I want my tax dollars going towards a enterprise mockup? no...sorry, but cost to functionality is not there...the people of earth are wanting to actually get out in space, and a project like this requires some foresight..not just doing something cool yet without function or long term thinking.

So they want the taxpayer to fund a two trillion+ dollar NASA toy to fly around the solar system. What kind of fools do they think we are. The resources of creating this thing would cause more destruction of our environment too. We don't have to make every dream become reality. If these people want to explore space, we'll tie them onto a missile and send it to space. Do that a few times and soon our taxpayers will start saving money on these programs.

Originally posted by rickymouse
So they want the taxpayer to fund a two trillion+ dollar NASA toy to fly around the solar system. What kind of fools do they think we are. The resources of creating this thing would cause more destruction of our environment too. We don't have to make every dream become reality. If these people want to explore space, we'll tie them onto a missile and send it to space. Do that a few times and soon our taxpayers will start saving money on these programs.

There is a ton of money/resources/stuff to be made in space. asteroid mining, ship building, solar system exploration, telescope manufacturing, etc etc etc.
We need to get into space...we must expand if our species is going to survive..the debate isn't if we should or shouldn't, its about how we should take our first few steps.

The design is nonsense, but if someone motivated starts doing something, it just might get the right people talking, and a proper step towards it will be underway.

This isn't a dream to do it, its a nightmare if we don't do something however.

reply to post by Havick007

We don't need war?

Tell that to hitler or religious extremists.

Sometimes we need war. That's why we have a military.

Do we fight some wars we didn't HAVE to? Yes.

Can we spend the money better? Yes.

Can we get rid of the military and end all wars? No.

We're GOING to make dreams real, it just takes time.

We've written about and speculated about things LONG before they became real. Robots, flying vehicles, submarines, atomic bombs, other earths around other stars, laser guns, communications devices, computers, spaceships, and many other things were written about before they became real.

It just takes time...

Look at this:
www.planetaryresources.com...

The company will probably fail, but it's more realistic than building the enterprise.

2032 eh, you want a bet we'll be seeing star-ships in our skies in the next few years

reply to post by galadofwarthethird

Asteroids present a reason to do space travel. They may have elements we need. IF we don't solve the fusion thing in the next 50 years (so we can produce the elements we want here on earth) then we'll have to mine them somewhere. Since we're running low on earth-based precious elements, it makes sense to get them off planet. Mining has traditionally been a big piece of the economy.

It also makes sense to build telescopes in space or on the other side of the moon or in deep space to view exoplanets or much further into the universe than we can from earth.

Then there's the helium-3 thing, but that might be exaggerated.

And the ... "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

I'm sure there're many economic reasons to spread out.

Once we have a spaceship factory off planet then it will greatly reduce the costs since it's so expensive to launch this stuff into orbit from earth. The atmosphere of earth is a lot of drag.

Of course, mini-nuke propulsion could do it. That was what hte project orion thing was. They estimated that the bigger the ship was the more efficient it would be to launch from the surface. But the prospect of exploding nukes to propel a spacecraft from earth to orbit didn't catch on.

reply to post by elevatedone


It would be a "spaceship" not a "starship" as the only star it would be close to is our own sun.

It would be like the Titanic replica that guy is building except it wouldn't be as functional.

Instead, it would be nice if we seriously undertook building a space elevator with the carbon nanotubes we are nearing cheap methods of mass producing. We could then move anything we want into orbit cheaply.

Imagine a huge city seemingly hanging in the sky with it's lower spire almost scraping the ground while the other end soars out of the atmosphere. That would be a cool sight.

I thought we'd be all over the solar system by now when I was a kid in the 70's with most polluting industries in orbit and dragging water and minerals from the asteroid belt... instead we got Iraq 1 and Iraq 2 with young republicans playing football with wads of greenbacks. Heavy sigh.

reply to post by SaturnFX


What are you, A NASA spokesman or something. We need to stop wasting resources not increase wasting resources. Why don't we just grab a ride with Thor on his his Aztec mothership next time he comes by.

There is no way that the cost of these things could ever be recovered by taxpayers. NO WAY. I'm not into making slaves out of my grandchildren just so some people can go play in space. Every venture taken on by our government funded space programs failed to produce anything significant to the taxpayer other than bragging rights of the taxpayers. All that money just to say you were first or best is stupid. Why don't we create a big vacuum cleaner to remove all that space junk for recycling.

reply to post by elevatedone


Honestly, I think that 20 years is far too aggressive of a timeline for such functionality.

It's inevitable that either space travel, or dimensional travel will become normal. But, when it comes to Governmental programs their mantra always seem to be small steps, and quite honestly, I believe it would take 20 years alone for them to come to majority concession that it is, in fact, something worth thinking about never mind building it.

I think in the short-term I would rather see the tax dollars going towards repairing the economy after which, new programs for exploration when there is more of a surplus of funds.

Originally posted by alphabetaone
reply to post by elevatedone

 

Honestly, I think that 20 years is far too aggressive of a timeline for such functionality.

It's inevitable that either space travel, or dimensional travel will become normal. But, when it comes to Governmental programs their mantra always seem to be small steps, and quite honestly, I believe it would take 20 years alone for them to come to majority concession that it is, in fact, something worth thinking about never mind building it.

I think in the short-term I would rather see the tax dollars going towards repairing the economy after which, new programs for exploration when there is more of a surplus of funds.

The engineer who operates the website buildtheenterprise.org should start small

and then scale it up.

reply to post by jonnywhite


That's the whole point isn't it?

Hitler and the Naxi party were just ideaology but the majority of the German people did not actually agree with that war in the latter years..

Kinda reminds me of something in recent years - occuaption of Iraq

How does a government make it's people agree with something that is not moral!?

It's all about ideology - There was no need for the past few minor wars that the US involved itself in but many defence contractors got rich from it...

Think about it!

WW2 was the same, don't you think the "allied" forces could have killed Hitler and his top men with out going to full war????

If you believe otherwise then you are not thinking clearly and only listening to what your government wants.



What is more profitable? War or killing the person behind the ideology?? Who makes money? Not us!

The defense contractors and people that make the jets, bombs, guns and bullets!

For the people and companies in the business of war ( Multi-Billion$$) business of war... there will always be war! They are the ones that stand in the shadows and pay contributions to presidential elections and in-turn create a debt for those in power...

It's actually quite simple in many ways but quite sad that so many don't actually see it.

reply to post by elevatedone


Hi elev

20 years sounds like some one is dreaming here.
Warp speed and all.
You do know that there hasn't even been a manned space effort in forty years.
Bush's moon shot was canceled by the current administration.
The plans for the heavy lift rockets have been lost.
A man has not been outside of low earth orbit.
How could he possibly fly to stars in 20 years. I smell smoke here LOl ljb
PS the plans are cool though