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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. Pacifism loses ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    at a cost of roughly $1 trillion

    So a fraction of what we spend on the military finding new ways to blow things up or on wall street bailing out incompetent bankers, then? We definitely have our priorities don't we?

    Yes, we do. Without a military our civilization would fall to a more aggressive civilization. A military is necessary to create the environment where your civilization can do something other than be a servant to another.

    Go read a copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel. In it there is an example of a society that turned pacifist. IIRC a group of pacific islanders migrated to another island and eventually lost contact with their former home. This group started out aggressive and became pacifist during their isolation. Their parent society remained aggressive. When contact was re-established some small number of generations later (2, 3 ?) the isolated group was enslaved by the parent society. Keep in mind that this is how people that were blood relatives with the same culture and beliefs, other than the pacifist part, were treated. Pacifism loses unless *everyone* else is also pacifist.

    Could we spend our resources on the military more efficiently, yes. Do we need a large military capable of projecting power globally, yes, isolationism won't work any more. Could we get involved in global affairs less, yes, that WW1 Wilsonian let-the-locals-sort-it-out idea is probably best. Assuming of course the sorting-it-out is strictly a local affair.