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Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise In 20 Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the to-boldly-go dept.

Nancy_A writes "An engineer has proposed — and outlined in meticulous detail — building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the starship Enterprise. The ship would be based on current technology, and would take about 20 years to construct, at a cost of roughly $1 trillion. 'We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise – so let's do it,' writes the curator of the Build The Enterprise website, who goes by the name of BTE-Dan."

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  1. This is nothing like the Enterprise except ... by dougmc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is nothing like the Enterprise except in shape -- and it would be pointless to duplicate the shape.

    And besides, in the Enterprise world, dilithium crystals (with antimatter in there somewhere) were the power source of "reality", and "ion power" was what made Scottie get all wide-eyed.

    With current technology, we'd end up with a generational sublight ship. Keeping in with the Star Trek theme, this would be closer to the SS Botany Bay which according to Star Trek canon was launched only 18 years ago. Of course, that turned out horribly wrong, so maybe it's not the mission to emulate.

    Joking aside, making such a ship would be very neat. But the guy needs to stop pretending that it has anything to do with Star Trek or it's Enterprise. We could call it Enterprise if we wanted, but picking that shape would be silly -- there are much more practical shapes to be had. And considering just how expensive this would be, we should be trying to make it practical rather than novel.