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.
Uhm. I'm sure the USS Enterprise was designed to fly in a vacuum; you know.. cause.. space is a vacuum.
*ahem*
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.
.....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...
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???
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?
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.
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"
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.....
Should'nt Star Trek have its own icon?
Starwars does...
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
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.
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.
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
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?
It's Troll Time!
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..."
The babelfish translation of the Japanese site says that he has some "compound rudder, aileron, elevator" at the rear of the disk.
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
Americans know the metric system, just ask anyone who does or sells cocaine.
Jonathan B.
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
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.
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.
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...
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...
Appears HERE .
It seems the plane weighs a bit more than 16 grams...
:)
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!