Slashdot Mirror
USS Enterprise Finally Flies
apetime writes "Found on Slashdot Japan: Model builder Kaname of Kumamoto, Japan has built a flying radio controlled model of the original Star Trek's USS Enterprise. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for a video. Or go here for an mpeg, and here for a WMV.) The ship measures from 75 cm, and only weighs 16 grams. It's a wobbly flight, but makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried."
But now the question is, if you transported inside of it, would you shrink?
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
I may be wrong, but I don't remember the original enterprise having a propellor. The article indicates that technology from that show may work in real life, but it's using old technology. cool to watch, but only for a slow friday night.
I guess this adds a whole new meaning to the use of wing-warping as a control method.
Previous /. post but great to think of a large one that would carry people. Need a big jet turbine though.
And it rendered on, until the end of its days.
Uhm. I'm sure the USS Enterprise was designed to fly in a vacuum; you know.. cause.. space is a vacuum.
*ahem*
..."Quantum Torpedos".
I thought Scott Baio was the first person to do this. :-)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0084945/
A local radio-controlled airplane hobbiest announced today that he has built a working model of (cue tympanis ... Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum) MEGA MAID.
Unknown host pong.
It's a wobbly flight, but makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried.
Actually, no, It doesn't.
I don't care how much it costs, I have to get one! I need to learn Japanese REAL fast.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
http://kanamerc.web.infoseek.co.jp/DOGA/NCC1701.MP G
bite my glorious golden ass.
The Enterprise did not fly.
Neither did the LEM.
KFG
.....just with wires.
Here is my local mirror on a server that won't be ./'ed...
mpg format
wmv format
It cannot enter warp speed in Earth's gravity well.
You should see my model Borg cube...
It doesn't even do warp 1!
funny, it doesn't look like a mirror of it...
I need a sig.
I'm not sure what he used for control surfaces (in fact, I'm not sure it has any control at all, and maybe just flies forward), but I think it says in the description that it took him four days, and he used a motor from a CD-ROM.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
With the right size engine, you can make anything fly. This isn't a demonstration of how well the "Enterprise" could fly. It's a demonstration of how you can make even a brick fly with the right thrust to weight ratio.
I like Star Trek as well as the next geek, but this is just plain silly.
Now, where can I get one???
the old rule still applies. Anything will fly if you put a big enough motor on it.(not that this thing required a big motor) Notice I don't consider stability an issue here. Obviously they do and did. And it worked. Cool. Similar wing design here. I noticed they didn't show the "landing". I hope it better than the one in Star Trek IV...
What?
So... When will we see a flying Imperial Star Destroyer?
Almighty Railgun
You Speak a Lethal Gospel!
Bloody Gibs Follow.
is it real flying if it is not a function of lift versus gravity? You can't have lift in the vacum, so is it actually flying?
this is a bad link.
ok, he used the disk for lift, but you can't really tell where the control surfaces are. I'd guess from the in-flight pitch (and lack of an obvious elevator} that simple engine power adjustment controls altitude. The only other control seems to be a rudder- is he using the engine struts or the engines nacelles themselves?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Estes is the company that makes the model rockets that a lot of us shot as kids.
They made, later in my youth, model jets powered by "glow" engines, that burned for a few minutes instead of a few seconds. This way, you could fly a model jet around.
I think that they had a Star Trek Enterprise model that took glow engines. I know that they had a model that you could launch off your pad.
I don't know if this is the same model. Probably not, since the guy would get badly burned if he shot glow engines off in his face.
I never owned a model that took glow engines though. I think that most of them piggybacked on more powerful boosters off a launch pad, and then the user remotely fired the glows when he could see the thing clearly enough to control it.
75 cm, and only weighs 16 grams
Hm. How does that compare to the "real" enterprise?
I'd love to have one. It would be even better with a few other Star Trek/Star Wars ships flying around with it. You could recreate your favorite battle scenes. How great would it be to see a bunch of X-Wings & Tie Fighters flying around at a park?!?
I'm still trying to get my pink flying pig to work. Ok, so I never built one yet though I plan too when I get some free time. I'm thinking of using a remote controlled helicopter. Next, I would hollow out some Styrofoam balls and wrap to of the halves around the chopper with only the blades sticking out.
I dunno, I guess I have strange sense of humor. But I would get a laugh out of seeing a pink fat pig with a curly tail flying around a skyscraper next to office windows.
Life is not for the lazy.
NERD ALERT!
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Now whoever modded that Informative should be spanked hard... with the Enterprise... by Majel Barrett!!
Too bad it did nothing in Mozilla.
this isn't the first enterprise to fly. The first one was the space shuttle of the same name (named in honor of the show if I remember correctly).
it just needs weapons and then u'll need a few klingon ships to come too.
Darn you posters who don't read the article! It quite clearly says: "OEã1"NSÔÉí½ÁÄ1"ú1ñÈãSY"-OEfZ¦"Âð`FbNé ;B"
Er, not sure why everyone is so freaked out about the movie link... The movie file is hosted by infoseek.co.jp...
Ahem...
infoseek.co.jp = infoseek.com = go.com = disney.com
I don't think they'd be _that_ fragile...
Why is it that we as a community tend to delight in the most absolutly innane things that one could possibly come up with?
Yes, I am probably refering to the community of humanity in general, once all the scores are tallied, i guess we arn't any more lame than people with cardboard cutouts of LoTR Characters in their ro....
oh...wait.
slashdot japan?!
what?!
you mean to tell me ive been reading this all this time and i couldve been the uber1337 version from the land of the rising sun?!
sezu-sai....
time to go learn japanese.....
But it only works on the ladies, and you have to be naked for it to work.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Heres a real mirror: http://www.niconet2k.com/~todd/mirror/kanamerc.web .infoseek.co.jp/DOGA/
I need a sig.
really geek
Should'nt Star Trek have its own icon?
Starwars does...
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Wait a minute! Slashdot Japan?? I've been a /. reader for several years now. How did I miss that -- when did this happen? The night I was doing...(wait, that isn't public information...) errr... OK. But I do realize the implications...
/. have on the world?
The Slashdot Effect is a reality. Something that can be proven by looking at server logs (just look at all the "not-intended" DOS shutdowns because of this great forum). Isn't the Japenese market one of the top 5 investing markets in the world (yes, I am actually asking here cause I am not sure...)?? Oh, either way I guess it is the trickle down effect. So does that say something bad or good for the US? Hopefully someone else will provide some insight....
What effect does
-nada firmó
its been done before, but never on this scale. 20g planes are becoming popular, the problem here was in solving the issue of having so much weight (body, nacelles) devoted to non-lift generating surfaces so far from the center of lift (the center of the saucer)
makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried
... I don't get these trekkies wasting so much time worshipping a mediocre series
But you could strap a pair of rockets to a 1000 Tons rock and it would also fly on space
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Japan is a tech powerhouse
WTF are you smoking?
Now to just get the warp core fixed...
Why am I just hearing of this now? The combination of Slashdot and Japan is just... beyond words. Interestingly enough, the page title is mostly english words transliterated into katakana:
Surashudotto Japan: Arege-na Nuusu to ****I suck at Kanji, mumble, mumble**** Seito
Let me point out that the above sentence contains the word "Japan". Not Nihon (), but the English word Japan. Wierdness. Slashdot gets Japanized as Japan gets westernized.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I'd much rather see the VF-1J Valkyrie fly! Seen here towards the bottom. Now _that's_ cool!
:p
Oh wait, I guess it's normal for a F-14 clone to fly...
Doesn't the saucer portion disconnect for atmospheric flight?
Still way cool though.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
In ST:Generations, the saucer seperation occurred and demonstrated a mild-powered explosion-induced glided (or should I say firely) though Veridian III atmosphere.
Also, in ST:Voyager Episode 201 shows Voyager crash landing on an ice planet.
In ST:Voyager #192 (Demon), shows a graceful landing on a demon planet.
If only there were something like a communicator. That would be cool. A handheld walkie talkie-like thing only able to talk to almost anybody on the planet. It could maybe even open up like a clam. Sigh. I guess it will never be.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Am I the only one who thinks they shouldn't of kept quiet till after some Star Trek convention unleashed this bad boy on a group of inebriated Trekkies at the end of a bar crawl?!?
Now that's a video I'd like to see!!
I stole this Sig
Captain: warp speed ahead
Scotty: but sir, i c'not reach the control panel
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Some of the other ones are good too!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
but makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried."
I imagine any of the Rombulan Warbird designs would work decently enough. Most models past and present have enough surface area and shape to naturally act as a wing with a little bit of work.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Yeah, seeing the obvious shape of a Battroid Valkyrie in the preview picture then actually seeing it in flight was far more impressive than the Enterprise. I just wanted to see it change into a Guardian or Battloid!
a couple months ago didn't someone do a test showing that the enterprise's design would hold up very well at mach 5+?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I had a flying Enterprise when I was 6. It was attached to a center swivel base by a plastic arm and flew in a circle, but could liftoff and land at any point, and you controlled the thing with a wired handset. It had a fan mounted under the dish section of the ship which provided lift. As I remember it came with a little plastic guy that you could pick up and, well, set back down via a hook under the Enterprise.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
Maybe these plans will help someone here make their own. This isn't what the guy in the video was flying, but it's a working design..
plans
One of my friends says he built one an RC Enterprise from a kit years ago - does anyone know if those are still available?
ST:Voyager
(ok, ok, its not the Enterprise)
I am not responsible for what not the Enterprise did in Star Trek:Voyager.
I also mentioned that the LEM, which was known to make a soft landing or two, did not fly. It would have been just irrelevant to show me a picture of the space shuttle flying.
What else from Star Trek might work? Well, pretty much anything you look at and think "Oh. That might work."
They didn't just make everything up from nothing to do the show. They relied on current knowledge. They didn't do any science. Saucers have known aerodynamic qualities ( and any number of us in the 60s made "flying" devices of one sort or another by gluing two paper plates together, even before Star Trek). If you bang matter into antimatter you'll get energy. If you make clocks out of rotating cylinders. . . the whole thing ends up looking silly because you couldn't even predict simple technologies just a few years out.
The model is interesting, but doesn't mean or imply anything at all about Star Trek "technology." It isn't even a new idea, it just has a new web page.
KFG
I'm sorry... they might have been the first to deliver an actual kit to the RC market, but I basically built the exact same thing when I was 11. Now if it had some sort of new propulsion technology, and could hover (in effect mimicking the 0 gravity effect of space), that would be cool. In the words of Wired magazine: this bird is expired.
There's something here even more amazing than a flying enterprise. They've got a server hosting 4 Mb video files on slashdot's frontpage, and it hasn't crashed yet!
what sig?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
That's what a Bablefish is for. Don't have one stuck in your ear? Just use this.
Err... not so sure what kind of 'weirdos' were hosting the site, but last I checked they were Japanese... they have their own language, culture, and everything. :-/
If by 'normal' you mean an english translation, dload a Japanese language pack and babelfish it or something...
It's Troll Time!
Heh, everything is cooler in Japanese ;]
Why, even their "Insightful" moderation translates as "splendid discernment."
Mind you, that is the Babelfish translation... My brain still hasn't forgiven me for trying to memorize the kana, much less the kanji...
Keep going at it long enough, and you may have nasty dreams of being jacked into the Matrix with it raining katakana (which is what those green falling symbols were in the Matrix movie... at least, I don't remember seeing any hiragana or kanji among them). Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be trying to forget my failed attempt to learn Japanese...
! !
When I read the subject I thought it was flowery language referring to the recent news that Star Trek: Enterprise has been renewed for at least one more season.
Oh come on moderators! You know you want to mod it ++++Informative just so other people will fall for it to.
You should familiarize yourself with The Original Series. The sci-fi topic :O face is one of the aliens from one of the episodes. I quite honestly forget which, unfortunately. :P
I had one too, 'cept mine was a Colonial Viper. Had stand-up cardboard Cylon fighters to knock down and everything.
Many years ago, when I was into radio controlled planes, there was a guy who built lots of improbable flying machines. Most of them were constructed from foam polystyrene with relatively large motors. With enough thrust, and very little weight, you don't need much in the way of aerodynamics to make something fly.
I recall he built and successfully flew several flying saucers, a brick, a flying carpet (complete with a guy with a turban riding cross-legged on it)...and his crowning achievement: Santa's sleigh - complete with reindeer. Compared to that, getting a model of the Enterprise to fly is a piece of cake - it has plenty of surfaces that could generate lift - and you can see from the video that it needs a pretty steep angle of attack to keep it up.
www.sjbaker.org
Sounds like the thing they flew in Toy Soldiers.
:)
Maybe CleverNickName remebers where the control surfaces were?
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
...that the ad below the summary features Spock??
16 grams? maybe you mean 16 oz?
it travels in space, the model presented by those two people is actually a better version of the entreprise since it can fly in an atmosphere. About anything of about any shape and weight can "fly" in space... warp speed, now that's something to achieve...
this reminds me of a skit eddie izzard did. Kirk: "Scotty, we need warp 9 in 5 seconds or we're all dead!" Scotty: "I can give you 30mph in a week or two, captain..."
Looks like he is varying the thrust from the motor/prop, which is at some angle of attack against the bottom of the disk, to give pitch control. More thrust makes the nose pitch more upwards, less thrust makes the nose drop back down. I couldn't see any roll or yaw controls either, but I suspect he's probably got some kind of hidden spoilers that extend or retract a subtle amount in the back of the "engine nacelles". If I were trying to design it to give the thing some semblance of controllable flight while staying true to the shape of the craft, that's what I'd probably try to do.
Yeah. seeing that was much better news to me...
I'll be impressed when I see a model Omega class destroyer fly. ;-)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
The babelfish translation of the Japanese site says that he has some "compound rudder, aileron, elevator" at the rear of the disk.
This guy must be a Model God or somthing! wow!
"USS Enterprise Finally Fries"
I don't know if someone hacked the fortune-cookie generator just for this article, but this is the quote I got at the bottom of the page:
"Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!"
Now as any Trek fan knows, the impulse engines are on the saucer, and the warp engines are in the twin nacelles on stalks, attached to the engineering hull.
I read somewhere -- I think it was The Making of Star Trek -- that they always figured the saucer was held on to the engineering hull with explosive bolts, and in a dire enough emergency they could blow the bolts, fly on impulse, and even land the saucer (but probably not ever be able to take off again).
They never had occasion to use this, though.
I read somewhere else that the original ending of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (i.e., the Star Trek I movie) would have had lots of expensive special effects. The idea was that VGER, just before fading out, would re-create all the ships it had eaten and leave them behind. The problem was that it was leaving them near Earth, and it had shut down all Earth's defenses and forgot to turn them on again, and if you will recall it had eaten a few Klingon cruisers at the start of the movie. The Klingons look at a defenseless Earth and say "Whoa! Time to shoot some fish in a barrel!" and the Enterprise has to fight. Outnumbered and alone, Enterprise just barely wins... but they have to eject in the saucer.
If I could travel to parallel universes, I'd seek out one where that was actually made.
Geekily yours,
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
But have you ever tried to turn a brick?
paintball
According to the laws of thermodynamics, they don't.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
I'll see your geekiness and raise you a detail from the tech manual.
The saucer wasn't held on by explosive bolts, but a system of retractable latches/slots. That way you could disconnect and reconnect multiple times (this only happened in the first episode in one movie, I think). Suposedly, the saucer has no warp drive, but has a "sustainer" that lets it leach warp energy off the main hull for a couple of minutes (time enough to separate at warp and slow down). Not too sure that's practical, but hey, it's their universe.
And yeah, if used as a (extreme last resort) atmospheric lander, the saucer would presumably be a total loss.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Wake me up when they make a flying Battlestar Galactica.
MadOgre.com
Anything can fly if you find the correct angle of attack and give it enough thrust... even a Tennis Racket, or that Porcelin(sic?) Tux doll you have.
Are we talking about the same Enterprise? I'm talking about the one from the original series, the NCC-1701.
The one in TNG, the NCC-1701D, not only could detach and reattach, but there was a "battle bridge" to be used when commanding the engineering hull/warp engines piece without the saucer attached. As seen in the very first episode "Encounter at Farpoint".
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I was expecting a sound track! Crap, it's stuck in my head w/o even hearing it!
How long before slightly edited copies of that MPEG are found on various X-Files type web sites as "Genuine UFO Footage"?
As a pre-teen in the early '70's, I read the "Making of Star Trek" book, which I believe was authorized by Roddenberry and Paramount. Among the things I remember from the book:
- It stated that the Enterprise wasn't designed for atmospheric flight.
- The saucer section was said to be designed to separate from the rest of the ship. (Though this wasn't shown until either one of the TNG episodes or a TNG movie. I'm getting old, so I can't remember which. :-) )
- NBC censors considered a woman's nipple and underside of the breast to be verboten. (Quote from the book: "Perhaps they are afraid moss grows under there?")
- The studio asked Leonard Nimoy if he would consider plastic surgery to have his ears pointed for the show. He refused.
- The Enterprise was about a 10' long model mounted on a black pylon, with a star pattern on a wall behind it. The film crew ran the camera past the model on a dolly.
- For many years, the Smithsonian Institution's Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC had the actual filming model of the Enterprise hanging from the ceiling. (I think this is the only time it ever hung by wires.) Alas, the exhibit was taken down several years ago. It was one of my favorites.
- Dr. McCoy's portable "body scanner" devices were actually salt and pepper shakers found by the prop crew at a discount store.
- The shimmering "transporter effect" was done by attaching Christmas tree tinsel to sheets of wood and having stagehands shake them. The tinsel and live action film bits were merged together in post.
- There was a list of possible Vulcan male names, all of which "had to" (according to the book) start with "S" and end with "k", and contain only 5 letters. Among them was "Spork."
And before anyone accuses me of being a Trekkie, let me emphatically state that I am not. I have only watched almost every episode of all the series over the last four decades. I have never been to a convention, I have never worn a Starfleet uniform on Halloween or at any other time, and I do not know that any variant of "NCC-1701" is always called "Enterprise." So there.
And please don't read my sig.
Let's play Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'll be Pestilence.
No, we're not. I'd never heard anything about the original doing this... I assumed you the D. My bad.
Shit, now I lose geek points. Man...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Intrepid class, Defiant class, Delta Flyers, runabouts, and shuttles can land on planets, light cruisers and larger cannot. Even the Enterprise D can't do it in one piece, and the only reason they landed (actually crashed) the saucer section is because they had no choice.
But then again, the way they write Star Trek stuff now is totally inconsistant with older shows, and forget about any of the books, including the tech manuals.
Ok, the propellor I can overlook, obviously 1:250 scale impulse engines are a little thin on the ground. What I want to know is who they got to hand launch the original. Chekov: Heading, Captain? Kirk: Out there, somewhere. Chekov: I'm sorry Captain, but station launch sergeant Richards doesn't appear to...oh wait, here he is. Kirk: He's a, um, big boy, isn't he? Uhuru: (wistfully) He certainly is.
I don't get these trekkies wasting so much time worshipping a mediocre series
Yeah, they're almost as bad as the 1U53R2 bashing trekkies on a site that's labelled "news for nerds"...talk about pathetic!
You can't take the sky from me...
For those who with curiosity, here is its "About" page...(the English version appears at the bottom).
Slashdot Japan started on May 28, 2001 and is about to celebrate the third anniversary. It receives a few constant news posts per day and enjoys reasonably high activity.
Honestly? Forget moding the threads. This is kind of pointless. It is not like someone build a lifesize flying vehicle of the Enterprise. We are talking a model that was done out of super lightweight material.
Seriously, this is the most pointless article, after the last one.
RonB
Reports have been surfacing all over the net that a flying spacecraft was seen in the vicinity of Japan... news at 11...
Damn good thing they didn't fly this thing near Area 51 or we might have been misled to believe a lone motorcyclist spotted it.
Feed my eyes...
The huge slow motion impact, that fells trees as the saucer-section finally impacts.
Well, fells moss, in this case I guess.
Appears HERE .
It seems the plane weighs a bit more than 16 grams...
You're kidding right? :)
Doors do open automatically, everywhere. Quite common
Computers can respond to voice commands. It's a bit different than in the movies, but we have a guy at work who never touches his keyboard. He does his whole job using Dragon Dictate on his PC.
And of course, lasers are used to perform surgery.
Much of the things of Science Fiction past have become reality. I'm still waiting for my flying car though... They promised me a flying car
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
It took 4 days to make it, the first try resulted in a crash becuase of insufficient power, but replacing the motor with a CD-ROM brushless motor it worked. Or something like that.
" but makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried."
No it does not.
And I am sure that everything it that show that isn't technobabble has been experimented with. Finally where do you think they get the ideas for all that stuff.
Is that a vacuum flying in a vacuum?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
And the "real" Enterprise wasn't even transatmospheric!
Wouldn't that be "plane silly"?
but the cost of the dilithium chrystals will bankrupt you.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
They never had occasion to use this, though.
I know it's not the original Enterprise, but there was that movie where they did pretty much exactly as you described.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The modeller's budget probably didn't include enough money to develop the DiLithium crystal engines that allegedly powered the "real" ship, so he faked it with a prop. That's fairly common in R/C modelling; there are quite a few models of "jets" that are prop-driven. With a huge increase in cost, I suppose he could have had some kind of turbojets or ducted fans. At that point, it would be a really big model.
Using the disc-shaped part of the ship as a wing is a cool idea. Of course, the "real" ship would not have had anything other than engine thrust to control roll, pitch, and yaw, so whatever control surfaces he had on that thing were totally bogus. For that matter, the ship was never supposed to enter the atmosphere of any planet, so its aerodynamic properties were meaningless anyway.
:)
...but makes you think what else in Star Trek might work if it were tried
Not really.
A few rows up from the Enterprise video link (on that main page), there's a video for another plane that looks suspiciously like the Valkyrie fighter out of the old Macross anime series. Sucker flew pretty dang well too.
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Woah
Captain! We're givin you all she's got! The rubber bands canna' take much o' this!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Also that doesn't involve "flying" but rather the old put a large enough engine on a brick and it can escape gravity. It ain't dogfighting the jet it is simply trying to get its engines back online and blast out of orbit.
This model plane really few like any other winged aircraft. (wobbly still counts) I was just disappointed to the engine attacked to the saucer section nose. Would be more fun to put pushing propellors in the nacelles. But that would probably destroy what little balance it has.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The original enterprise didn't have propellers...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
NASA didn't want to name the first shuttle enterprise, and they had a good reason, but the ST fans had a letter writing campaign, raised some hubbub, and NASA relented. Too bad the first shuttle was for testing and not for regular space flight.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I mean, I knew that CVN-65 was a tad over-powered with its 8 fission reactors, but they actually got the USS Enterprise to lift out of the water? Dear God!
It was supposed to be an added bonus to watch that God-awful show. Didn't work for me. And, honestly, neither did Jeri Ryan's breasts. But that's another thread.
main page.
vertical takeoff saucer
tiny saucer
a Wraith from StarCraft
more flying pancakes
- Anonycous Moward
What happened to the Uncut Version of this vid where Enterprise floats over that Skeet range? BOOM!
Anybody remember the exact Gene Roddenberry quote about the design of Enterprise? Something about "ass over tea kettle"...?
Why didn't they chose a Klingon "Bird of Prey". At least the darn thing has better flight characteristics, and it just has more attitude, especially in that scene from Star Trek Greenpeace where the frighten the stool out of those Russian whalers. Tuplah!
How fortunate, then, that Solar Sails rely on Newtonian-style momentum-based physics, and the "laws" of thermodynamics don't apply. (And how unfortunate for the misguided author of that paper.)
(Note: "don't apply" here means simply that we aren't dealing with heat, not that Solar Sails somehow violate those laws.)
Not that I'm much of a "trekkie"... I just have a good memory. I recall reading a friend's copy of the "Starfleet Technical Manual" back in the 70's. They described the purpose of the deflector dish has being neccessary to repel any particles in front of the ship.
Zapp Branigan: One day, a man has everything. The next day he blows up a $50 billion dollars DOOP Headquarters. And the next he has nothing. Makes you think...
Kif: NO IT DOESN'T!
Mod this up, PLEASE! This is actually a clever joke!
but I think the original poster's joke whizzed right past your head like a flying model of the Enterprise.
Don't you mean an "ailervator?"
...Did she have anti-gravity generators to make them stand up like that?
7o9 was the best part of Voyager, IMHO.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
... These just isn't anything ELSE there either.
(rofl)
Really, the number of molecules in space decreases the further you get from a planet in an exponential manner: at Geosynchronous orbit level, there is fewer than 1 molecule per cc , which is below 1 x 10^15 torr, which is a pretty hard vacuum.
Solar sails work because of light pressure, supposedly, and there is some controversy on whether they will work or not. Light pressure does apparently affect small asteroids, so, hopefully, solar sails will work too.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
..You have to have a special license to get motors, with 'midnight storage inspections' and other disincentives to ownership similar to automatic weapons ownership.
Thank Ashcroft and his jackbooted thugs for ruining yet another geek hobby....
you are one of:
- male and homosexual;
- female and heterosexual; or,
- just plain beyond all help.
HTH. HAND.dict 'sarcasm' sometime.
BTW, it was one of the lamer ST:TOS episodes.
A damn good example of design too - form following function, and never mind the aesthetics. Built from the ground up (sorry) for CAS, rather than being an outdated or overweight fighter as had often been the case in that role.
The post anonymously option you are [not] attempting to use is one that isn't available to your user.
...ever!
Needless to say I was on the internet in minutes,registering my disgust.
Ryan ain't my cup of tea. I prefer women who have a personality beyond that of lukewarm oatmeal.