 May 28, 2012 - 8:57pm | Came across this a few days ago. http://www2.electronicproducts.com/How_to_build_a_fully_functional_Star_Trek_Starship_Enterprise_in_20_years-article-fajb_buildt... The website the article is covering is here: http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/ I'd love to see this attempted but I also recognise that this guy does some hand-wavium with his statements that we just throw money and time at some of the new tech. -iggy |
 May 28, 2012 - 9:14pm | Ahhh...perhaps just a little bit optimistic I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 29, 2012 - 6:24pm | Instead of the Enterprise how about building a handful of explorers to head out to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. Do some Lunar mining. Maybe some asteroid mining. Even experiments to mine gas giant atmosphere. They could even push the technology envelope. |
May 29, 2012 - 7:06pm | This will never happen anyway and I'm a Trek fan. We cant even keep a space pick up truck going and have retired it totally and you get arse hat politicians talking about going back to the moon or going to Mars, P-L-E-A-S-E! The money isn't there and in this economy it aint gonna be there. Frankly I think this guy is ridiculous to propose this in 20 years. Sorry, I got to call this one out as dumn. We just retired the space pick up truck of 56 meters and he's talking about building a ship of 360 meters all the while trying to make that ship look like a fictional design and pioneering new tech? Not buying that. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 30, 2012 - 2:12pm | Feh, I'll take an Incom T-65 X-Wing for the win. |
 May 31, 2012 - 1:11pm | This will never happen anyway and I'm a Trek fan. We cant even keep a space pick up truck going and have retired it totally and you get arse hat politicians talking about going back to the moon or going to Mars, P-L-E-A-S-E! The money isn't there and in this economy it aint gonna be there. I agree with you. This guy is a dreamer, and trying to keep to a star trek design is silly. I also agree that politicians need to give up on trying to propose space programs, it is not thier strong suit. The moon is not somewhere we need to go again. Been there, done that. Mars is a different story in my opinion, but government will have to take a back seat. Private enterprise is the strongest hope for humanity expanding into space. The economy will never improve to the point where the government can ever again jusify manned space exploration, but there are resources and interested investers who are going now. For less money, with simpler designs. For example: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
May 31, 2012 - 1:32pm | If the moon has exploitable resources and commercial interest can get them economically? Then yeah the moon gets colonized. But there will have to be a, "Show Me The Money!" aspect to it. Funny thing, recently on Leno when he was doing his Headlines bit he showed an authentic moon rock that was being sold then the camera zoomed in and it said "Made in China" That reminded me about hearing that private ownership of moon rocks in the US was illegal? So company X starts mining the moon and brings back ore. government agents show up at the landing pad/strip/site and confiscate the ore. http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2009/07/can-you-legally-own-a-piece-of-the-moon/ I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 31, 2012 - 2:10pm | The problem with the moon is the lack of atmo. Mars has the benefit of having enough of one to allow aerobraking. All things concidered, it would take less fuel to get to Mars, and when you get there you could use local resources to survive and make fuel for the return trip. The Laws governing most of space exploration need to be relaxed in order for private companies to realy take off. http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/treaties.html Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
 June 1, 2012 - 10:48pm | Would a habitable space station be a better place to start. I can think of some reasons to build a city in space, but I don't think they would qualify as solid reasons for anyone to do it. Orbital manufacturing, if their is anything that we can make better and cheaper in space. Especially if we could bring ore from another planet, but that is another issue. Tourism would be good too. But really, we have so much space on the planet that no one lives on, and all our other issues, There really is no reason at this time to go to space. I think it will take some dreamers and entrepreneurs to see anything happen in our life times. |
June 1, 2012 - 10:51pm | I almost forgot, I think the enterprise clone is a bad idea too. Fiction is great for creating things, but real engineering and the real environment would dictate a different design. Why not make a borg cube instead? |
June 2, 2012 - 7:52am | Go Borg cube!!!!!! OR even Romulan Warbird or War Eagle from TOS. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
June 2, 2012 - 7:13pm | Karxan, I think tourism is a posability, as is a satilite repair servicebased on a space staion. Actualy a space colony is a reletively well explored idea. Gerard O'Neill and some of his students developed a plan using resources launched roboticly from the moon. Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
June 2, 2012 - 8:27pm | @Jacobsar, Thanks. I am going to have to get that book and read it. Looks like some good reading. |
June 2, 2012 - 9:58pm | Orbital manufacturing, if their is anything that we can make better and cheaper in space
Better? No doubt. Cheaper than China? Impossible. |
June 3, 2012 - 4:12am | Ball bearings can be made perfectly round in 0g- however the thing that stands out to me is that we've obviously made do with ball bearings made in a gravity well all these years. I imagine that if you're going to have a star empire or star nation you will have to have orbital infrastructure that essentially bridges the gap between dirt side and space. However, in fiction there is almost always an outside pressure forcing humans to maintain expensive space industry and fleets, whether inscrutable aliens wanting to main and kill for their own reasons we cant fathom or human space communist being communists or whatever their ideology is. In those circumstances no one really questions the expense. In the real world, inevitably someone, somewhere, sometime will question why are we spending all this money. Usually the people doing that are really focused on some social issue and think that just throwing money at it will make it go away and spending all this money in space is a sin. Hard to change that opinion. Of course the advances we have in science and technology as a result of the space effort would not be around if we had been more saintly and not sinned so egregiously by funding space exploration. The truly narrow minded will say fine we can do without that but the case can be made that without the advances made possible there would be people suffering or dead. In the book "Science Goes to War" and it chronicled from the ancient era to now how war has driven science forward with an interesting chapter on attitudes of scientist toward war and the military. Its interesting to me that emerging nations funded programs that actually developed modern mathematics in the quest for better and more accurate artillery and it was a top down decision to spend tax money for these advances. That we have canned food because nations needed a better way to provision armies- first the French canning vegetables in glass and the British developing tin cans. The premise of the book was that war has given scientific advance and the case it makes is compelling. What would the world be like without canned food? How much is affected by Math? What would life be like without modern mathematics? It seems to me that if we did adopt the quest for reaching the stars, and when I write that I mean really and truly adopt it as a people then the battle for space could replace war as the catalyst for scientific advance. As sinful as it is to spend money on space perhaps it would be less sinful then spending it on war. As good as that sounds, the theologian in me knows that man is a sinner and sinners sin and that the Bible predicts that war and man's inhumanity to man will always be with us until the end. That new advances in science will just mean better ways to indulge our true nature and kill more efficiently. That space will be a battle ground with robotic minions carrying on our diplomacy by other means. Still, I think it would be better to spend money on space then war, even though doing so will pay dividends for the war machine; but what do I know, I'm just a sinner anyways. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
June 3, 2012 - 6:59am | "Earth: the crown jewel of the galaxy. Yet even the most weary or aggressive space travellers tend to avoid it, as it is unwise to interfere in the affairs of a race that points weapons at itself." Frank Miller, the Dark Knight Returns 2 |
June 3, 2012 - 8:02pm | @SS, That is a good quote. @ Jedion, I have studied a little about advances in science due to war. You are correct, we would not have a lot of things to help people without those advances. Transportation, agriculture, medicine, and even sports have all been affected by science from war. Space science has given us many new technologies too. I would agree, I would rather see us focus on space than on war. And if it is a sin to dream about exploration and in that helping our fellow man, someone is a little confused. |
June 3, 2012 - 9:00pm | @ Karxan; I was waxing eloquent or soemthing. It amazes me though how many people actually think about social problems in the context of "here is a hungry man, we have a moral obligation to give him some fish" Its never lets teach him to fish. Funny how he's still hungry after being give an fish. The irony is that money spent by Napolean on scientific advances to enable waging war is still paying dividens today for all mankind (whether they have fish or not). The perception is that spending money on war or space is somehow terrible. Yet the money spent today will pay dividens tomarrow. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
June 4, 2012 - 6:23pm | I agree with you Jedion. If we can help those who need help, I believe that is the right thing to do. But we can also help generations overcome for the future by looking ahead and trying to build that better future. Besides, If someone can teach me to to a better job at taking care of myself and not just handing me things, I actually like working to better myself. I have a heart for helping people but I don't want to get caught up in giving things away all the time. I have seen that in the church and the good intentions start and then the recipients abuse it and ruin the help. I thought it would be a better idea to help people find jobs and reteach them to help themselves so you could really help more people. I believe that science can provide that long term help in some cases. Jobs can be created for instance in all sorts of areas with new discoveries. The way I see it now, Only scientists and other higher learned people will be able to go to space for the time being. As things are made cheaper and safer, it will open a door for, less educated, employment in space. Notice I did not say smarter. |
