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."
Here is my local mirror on a server that won't be ./'ed...
mpg format
wmv format
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.
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.....
nearly impossible. even a small motor and prop at the back would be very difficult. pusher RC models are very difficult to balance, it is hard to get enough weight up front to have a flyable CG. (I'm building a .40 size flying SPAD wing now and dealing with this issue...)
I don't think space is a true vacume. It is just considered one in relation to earths atmosphere. Anyways how do solar sails work? I think with the differences in gravitiy there might be enough friction material in space for this to work to some degree.
Space ships don't fly with "lift". There's barely any gravity to lift from even taking into account the miniscule amount of gas in space. In fact, the design of the Enterprise was chosen by Roddenberry precisely because it *wasn't* aerodynamic (as a respose to all the space shows and books that depicted space ships as being such). A mile-wide cube would have also sufficed (*ahem*).
Also, a solar sail would look nothing like the Enterprise. It would look like, er, a sail. A BIG one at that; bigger than the aforementioned mile-wide cube.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
They didn't have much range but they were pretty cool.
Also, I read somewhere... probably here, about a company that created a wearable one like in TNG as a cummunication device. The company has sold them to hospitals. See an article here http://www.forbes.com/technology/2004/03/16/cx_ah_ 0316chips.html
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Let's see what our moderators score this one as :P
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
The babelfish translation of the Japanese site says that he has some "compound rudder, aileron, elevator" at the rear of the disk.
Actually, there is.
End of Line.
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.