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

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."

Comments

There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Barbara, not Barbie]

An "Enterprise-type" starship is a misnomer at best. An ion drive to get to even the closest star would have to be a "generation" ship. It would take generations of people, born, liviing, dying, to reach the nearest stars.

The alternative would be some sort of 2001-type hibernation, which also would not be anything like the Enterprise.

"Beam me up Scottie, there's no intelligent life in this article."

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Engineer designs starship in spare time. Here's another man who needs to get laid...

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[brunes69]

If you RTFA, there is no goal to reach the next star. The Gen 1 would be an explorer for our solar system alone. The quoted specs say it could reach the moon in 3 days, mars in 90, and be able to visit other planets in reasonable times as well.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Anonymous Coward]

We're gonna spend a lot more than a trillion dollars on the F-35. We are insanely rich, and we have a ton of money to waste on stuff like this.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[pcardoso]

Those trillion dollars would create a lot of jobs building a thing like this.

Or all those billions going to the moon were wasted and nothing good came out of it?

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[chispito]

Hence the statement there is no STARship with just an ion drive. Starships travel between the stars.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Patch86]

More to the point, why on earth would you want to build a spaceship shaped like the Enterprise? It's not a particularly practical design for a spacecraft. It was picked for the show for exactly 3 reasons: 1) it looks like the ship from Forbidden Planet but with enough visual differences to avoid a lawsuit, 2) it looks cool and science-fictiony, 3) it fits in with all the fictional technology that it is fictionally loaded with (warp nacelles, deflector dish, etc). Assuming none of that stuff exists (and it doesn't), then don't make it that shape.

If what you want is a spaceship with ion engines and a rotating section with faux-gravity for pootling around the solar system, the best shape would not look like the Enterprise. If you must model it on something from fiction, the Discovery from 2001 is probably a better bet; but in reality it'll look much more pragmatically like the stuff we're building now.

Making it look like a prop from Star Trek is nothing but a nerdy wet dream.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Everything that could be done with the "Enterprise" is already much more likely to be done with unmanned probes. The "Starship Enterprise" is as much a waste of money as the space shuttle program was a waste because it failed to build on the success of the Saturn series.

The simple fact is that we're now back to begging the Russians to use "outdated" technology to do the job because the shuttles were a pork-barrel program that ended up crippling NASA financially and politically.

The shuttle itself was "defective by design", the seals that led to the Challenger disaster only needed because the SRBs were pork-barrelled out to a location that was far enough away that couldn't ship single-piece SRBs to the launch site, so they had to be built in segments.

Additionally, medding by the DoD led to the requirement that the shuttle be capable of doing near-high-polar-orbit missions, leading to a lowering of cargo capacity (high-polar orbits can't take advantage of the equatorial boost of the earth's spin).

Any trillion-dollar program is going to end up with the same problems. And yet, as the skate-board sized Mars Rovers showed, you can do real, long-term exploration - today - for half a billion for a pair of probes.

NASA's $18 billion could send out a probe a week every week, year-round. When a probe can work for almost a decade ... you do the math.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Robotic mission with humans grown near the destination.

"This space mission brought to you by Soylent Green."

As long as you're the first one to be decanted, "what could possibly go wrong?"

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Actually it could be built for a lot less in my opinion. Much of the cost of these things is just lifting stuff up there, but once the technology of the Star Tram is rolled out that cost will be gone. I wouldn't start out building giant spacecraft, more like -> increased orbital presence -> asteroid mining -> orbital refineries and manufacturing -> nice spaceships -> comfy seats spaceships, taking about 30 years to complete the arc.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[postbigbang]

Since when, has any project like this come in for under budget, adjusted for inflation, ever? People do trades on Wall Street that last for milliseconds. What makes you think they'll invest in something that has no guarantee of working, then takes perhaps 60yrs+ to have the first possible return on investment? No one does that these days, because all rewards must be immediate, apparently.

An ion drive isn't even C+. The rate of return on investment is somewhere near what "Voldemort" did for JP Morgan Chase, except 500x as big-- to start.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[tqk]

Here's another man who needs to get laid...

You say that like it's a bad thing. Chicks like to get laid too, you know?

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[JWSmythe]

I believe what he's suggesting is an equal percentage rate

If Person A is making $50,000, and he has to pay 30% in taxes, that's $15,000

If Person B is making $50,000,000, he should have to pay at the same percentage rate, or $15,000,000.

Rather, Person B has a percentage rate of 14%, or $7,000,000.

There's more to it though. Through proper investments and tax shelters, the actual amount paid can be closer to the amount that Person A pays. Person B doesn't necessarily get "paid" the full $50M. In the end, Person B may pay less than Person A in taxes, or even receive money back due to losses.

Person B may receive incentives, such as homes, cars, and residential staff paid for entirely by his employer. Vacation travel may be provided free of charge on the company's jet, or as a favor by another company.

There are plenty of off-shore tax havens also. He may make a taxable $200,000 in the US. Shell corporations in a number of countries may receive his reimbursements for services rendered, that were little more than notations on the paperwork.

I'm sure you've heard of CEO's that publicly say that they only make $1/yr. That is a token payment which signifies that they are employees of the company. They don't accept that because they are independently wealthy, nor because the feel they can support themselves with that $1/yr. It sounds good that they only take a $1 salary, but that isn't the only cost to the company. All of their expenses are paid for by the company, partner companies, and various shell companies.

When I first heard of such things, I thought it was a bunch of conspiracy noise. Over the 15 years, I have worked for and with many millionaires, and have carefully observed how it works. One paid out 50% of his income to the IRS, "just to be safe". It avoided various penalties and ensured that there would always be a refund. That was 50% of his taxable income, which was a small fraction of his actual income. The remainder went to various partner companies world wide, for services that were frequently only on the paperwork.

I did work for a company who's CEO and CFO ignored the laws though. They created millions of dollars of imaginary money by floating invoices and payments. They convinced investors to buy in their company that was hugely profitable. On the books, it looked like millions. In reality, the company revenue was in the thousands. Investments made up the rest, and they did very well for themselves. Because they committed so many violations of state and federal law, they were caught. One is looking at months in prison. The other is still in court.

Now back to Person A.. They can't afford to do any of that. They work hard every day to pay their bills and other financial responsibilities. If they fail to pay even a few dollars on their federal taxes, they are penalized heavily. If the IRS decides that a deduction is improper, they will fine heavily. In the 2005 tax year (I believe) I had two cars, and drove a total of approximately 12,000 miles for work. I drove both vehicles equally, and divided the total mileage between them. The deduction was small, but I wanted to be truthful. I did drive two cars. If they compared the odometer reading from when I purchased them, to the current odometer reading, and I claimed I only drove on car, they would see the claim was wrong. In 2009 (I believe), the IRS garnered my wages for $3,000. That was the error they calculated because they denied the deduction for the second car. The error was only a few hundred dollars. The remainder was a penalty. My pay dropped to $300/mo, because the IRS was taking the rest directly from me.

Those who don't have the money, really need it. That now reduced pay rate did not cover my essential costs. Food, shelter, utilities, and fuel to get to work. I had

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[tqk]

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?

Given the choice of blowing it on a Bernie Madoff or Goldman Sachs/Lehman Bros., I vote we build a starship. I'll clean the Jeffries Tubes.

To !@#$ with Earth!

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[tqk]

I don't recommend we do what he's suggesting, especially in that form factor, but it could be done for a lot less is my point. The most likely route to big shiny spaceships is as I outlined above.

FFS! Didn't you see the movie?!? All we need to do is bolt warp drive onto an ICBM, and wait for the Vulcans to notice!

Geez, slow today or what? :-)

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[CrackedButter]

Doesn't the value depend on what we put in the hole? It would be valuable if we could put all the world's corrupt politicians and lawyers in the hole as opposed to say Jennifer Anniston.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineer designs starship in spare time. Here's another man who needs to get laid...

I oppose your anti-intellectualism. Being intelligent and doing creative work is not an indicator that something is wrong. Getting laid is not the most important thing in the world. Curing diseases, improving agriculture, materials science, space exploration, information technology and other worthy pursuits are done - traditionally - without a requirement of having sex.

I know women that only fuck tall guys, sports stars, or cops. If women would make a rule to only fuck smart guys, maybe there would be less neanderthal bravado. I would expect this sort of attitude from Reddit or 4chan - but slashdot? Thats no bueno.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Here's another man who needs to get laid...

....says the man with the 3 digit ID.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[furytrader]

I'm sure glad SOMEONE found out a way to inject politics into this discussion. Where would we be without you? Thanks!

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[Dcnjoe60]

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?

Given the choice of blowing it on a Bernie Madoff or Goldman Sachs/Lehman Bros., I vote we build a starship. I'll clean the Jeffries Tubes.

To !@#$ with Earth!

Or one could feed and educate the poor. Just a thought.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[History's Coming To]

I was re-reading the Slashdot fusion power Q&A recently. The figure quoted to get the first generation of (barely) economically viable fusion reactors online was $80bn. The yearly spend by the US military is currently in the region of $650bn.

I suspect that if we want starships all we have to do is find a way of not putting enormous amounts of money into fighting and making money and just use it to develop the required technologies. I suspect that if the worldwide military budget and manpower were devoted to the human species for just one year the we'd see similar leaps in technology as the 1940-1970 period. Engineering is easy, people are difficult.

Re:There's no starship with just an ion drive

[JimCanuck]

I suspect that if we want starships all we have to do is find a way of not putting enormous amounts of money into fighting and making money and just use it to develop the required technologies. I suspect that if the worldwide military budget and manpower were devoted to the human species for just one year the we'd see similar leaps in technology as the 1940-1970 period. Engineering is easy, people are difficult.

I suspect that if we allowed the Military to R&D anything the hell they wanted WITHOUT political interference and gave them the budgets they had in the 1940-1970 time frame, as compared to both the Federal Spending, and GDP of each country, you'd find technology would progress just as fast.

As far back as the creation of a mass producible silicon transistor, the DoD funded that effort by Shockley to the tune of 15 million dollars (currently would have been 150 million dollars due to inflation of the last 60 years) to get the transistor that was built out of germanium into silicon so that it would be capable of being used in the guidance computers of missiles. You know the same simple technology that without it, we wouldn't be having this discussion on this website today.

Imagine the military throwing 150 million dollars to create the transistor today, people would go ape shit crazy and call it a total waste of money, the members of Congress would try to make sure that the money was spent in their interests regardless if their locations was not ideal, due to manpower knowledge or otherwise. And in the end the transistor would be another wasted experiment to the tune of a few times the initial 150 million outlay.

World War 2 and the mass mobilization for war, and then the mobilization to dominate in a MAD situation with nuclear weapons is what drove the progress we had then in the first place, not picking roses in the garden and playing nice with each other.

If only people were taught history, perhaps we would not have these kinds of discussions.

Mother of all Kickstarters

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell the mother of all kickstarters launching in 5, 4, 3, 2 ...

I could not find it

[skipkent]

I could not find this project on kickstarter

Star ship Enterprise?

[dispersionrelation]

The proposed ship would be starship Enterprise in the same sense the space shuttle Enterprise is the star ship enterprise. Not really a star ship if it can't travel between the stars... So why spend 20 years and 1 trillion dollars building a ship to explore the solar system? I think it would be much cheaper, quicker and more feasible to simply build an armada of probes to explore great tracts of the solar system in a much shorter period of time for much less money then a single ship flying from world to world.

Re:Star ship Enterprise?

[LordNimon]

So why spend 20 years and 1 trillion dollars building a ship to explore the solar system?

Because it's better than spending a trillion dollars to kill brown people with oil.

Re:Star ship Enterprise?

[Twinbee]

If that's where we're going to be eventually - in space. We'll get there a lot quicker by building 'useless' projects like this. Plus it's exciting. More exciting than say, oh I don't know, spending 1 trillion on blowing up the world or something.

Modulo the small problem of getting into orbit

[sphealey]

There is no doubt that in a situation of species-threatening emergency that mankind has, today, the technology to construct a quite large object in earth orbit and give it enough engine power to move through the solar system (Orion drive or whatever). The problem is that we do not have the technology to get stuff out of the Earth's gravity well with anything greater than 0.1% efficiency, and in the process of building that Enterprise-sized object we would destroy the Earth's atmosphere and ecosystem. So until a 10,000x better surface-to-orbit launch technology comes along this ain't gonna happen.

sPh

Re:Modulo the small problem of getting into orbit

[joe_frisch]

NO, its not the first 100 miles, its the 10km/sec required to reach orbit. All of these "spaceship 1" type projects are nowhere near the delta-v required to reach orbit and this has caused a lot of confusion. Getting to 100 miles is relatively easy - the delta-V is below the exhaust velocity of chemical rockets so you don't need a huge mass ratio. The problem with orbit is that the delta-V is higher than a chemical propellant so the fuel / mass ratio of the rocket becomes large.

Earth to orbit is of course possible - we've been doing it for half a century, but its still expensive and difficult.

--- Joe Frisch

"We have the technological reach . . ."

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Technological reach is never the problem. Political reach is.

gravity wheel has weird orientation wrt thrust

[RichMan]

If the ship accelerates under constant acceleration per the description then at the front side of the saucer those on the gravity wheel will feel
1G - A
and those on the back side of the saucer will fell
1G + A

So every loop around the gravity wheel you go through 2A of gravity variance As the +A thrust vector rotates from your feet to head and side to side of you.

Sea-sickness prevails.

It might have a lot of "detail" but an error this glaring just seems that they have missed a whole lot of other stuff.

This is nothing like the Enterprise except ...

[dougmc]

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.

Re:build a space elevator and use it to get the pa

[sphealey]

= = = = build a space elevator and... = = = =

Soon as that 1000x-stronger-than-spider-silk cable material is invented, the electrical charge problems are solved, and the people living under the fall path of a broken cable accept the risk we are good to go. Just a few minor engineering obstacles to be sure.

sPh

by comparison

[StripedCow]

Time to build starship: 20 years.
Time to reach nearest star: 10,000 years (*)

Based on these numbers, wouldn't it be better to let technology progress a little bit further?

(*) IANAA, not an astronomer

Re:I'd ditch the hull design first thing.

[Reemi]

Yes, let's build a cube.

Large spacecraft design -- make them spherical

[benjfowler]

I think if I were an engineer, looking to built large megastructures in space, with sufficient shielding for human occupants, I think I would look at a sphere first. Minimum surface area to enclose a given volume. Build from the inside out. Controllable rotational gravity; outer compartments are filled with water and storage; further in, put people and living space; further in still, put a radiation storm shelter (humans can cope with microgravity for short periods with no ill effects). Besides, if you were building a spacecraft not designed for reentry, there would be no need to make it aerodynamic.

Perhaps we should be taking our inspiration from the Death Star, not the Starship Enterprise.

Ships have to have a purpose

[Dzimas]

Columbus didn't sail three Caravels across the Atlantic "just because." The one thing missing in the history of space exploration has been a solid reason to do it. So far, it's been a somewhat aimless pissing match between superpowers -- let's put people on the moon with golf clubs, or float around the planet in a pressurized tin can for 6 months. Whoopee. Things get far more interesting for tribes of bald monkeys when there's a concrete reward involved - mining rights, vast wealth, land, military superiority and so on. Sadly, the whole "space" thing is going to be a bit of a farce until there's profit of some kind to be had. *Then* it gets interesting. And not necessarily in a good way.

Re:I'd ditch the hull design first thing.

[rgbrenner]

That's why you don't design spaceships. The Enterprise had a great design because it was aerodynamic.. one of the most important things in space.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Pacifism loses ...

[Teancum]

They also envisioned a citizenry that was well trained in the martial arts at all levels and a very active component of the national military made up of state-level militias. Throughout most of American history, the national military was made up of a small core of a modest national army (usually about 30,000 soldiers during peacetime) supplemented with state organized regiments that would grow or shrink as needed. This continued until the end of World War II, when the national army started to dominate the state militias.

Standards of training, uniforms, and other "regulations" were to come from the national government (and is spelled out explicitly in the U.S. Constitution), but the idea was more of a highly trained citizenry more along how the Swiss Army is organized.

It is useful to know that Switzerland has been able to defend itself against much larger and more powerful countries, had two world wars rage all about them, yet never had to either capitulate to the demands of the major powers about them nor even get involved in any of those conflicts. Most citizens of Switzerland are armed (at least have weapons in their homes) because they are also members of that nation's military in some capacity, even though they are on "reserve status".

That was also the point of the 2nd Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, where armed citizens were expected to take the time to learn how to use weapons properly and there was even an assumption that nearly every citizens would take the time to go through at least some sort of military training. Even today I am a member of the "unorganized militia" in the state where I live (well... I was.... I'm a bit too old for that stuff now and the state constitution only requires people under 40 to be in that militia). Other states have similar clauses in their state constitutions and legal codes. How "organized" that "unorganized militia" actually can be is certainly subject to dispute, but it was never envisioned to have America be defenseless.

Re:What a dumb idea

[Imrik]

Oddly enough, helping more people survive tends to lower population growth.

Re:What a dumb idea

[Immerman]

Huh, you mean the Africans chose to have their (largely democratic) governments overthrown and replaced with British pillaging engines? Then when the British were finally kicked out the governments weren't actually replaced, only the people at the helm. Actually changing government at an institutional level is not an easy thing, especially when the vast bulk of the populace lacks the education to understand how (method, if not magnitude) they're being exploited.

But I'll agree, feeding people doesn't seem to help outside of short-term crises, in fact it can makes things worse by destroying local food markets and driving farmers out of business (potentially turning a short term crisis into an ongoing problem). Fair Trade exports have a related effect, why would a farmer grow food for the local market when he can grow much more profitable goods for the export market?

Education on the other hand does seem to help, as does free access to birth control and family planning education. It's not that hard for someone living on the knife edge of poverty to understand that they can give a couple kids a much better life than you can a handful, but abstinence is a tough pill to swallow. Of course education especially has it's detractors - every tin-hat dictator and religious power monger realizes their power depends on keeping the populace ignorant and downtrodden, and many won't hesitate to stoop to violent rhetoric to incite the populace against their would-be liberators. Still, there's plenty of places where that's not the case, and as we do what we can there word tends to spread. You can only keep people under your thumb so long before they start noticing that their neighbors who did listen to those vile, evil, disease-spreading infidels are actually looking a lot healthier and happier than they used to.

History has shown

[Dcnjoe60]

History has shown that as populations become more educated and better nourished that birthrates actually decline. It seems that poverty promotes high birth rates. Maybe it has something to do with there being slim odds to pass ones genes on to the future generations, the more one procreates, the better the chances of that occuring.

How one eliviates poverty and educates the poor is another issue. It has already been shown that drop shipping food doesn't work except in times of extreme famine. It has also been shown that giving financial aid to corrupt governments does not work either. But then again, neither does propping up corrupt regimes corporate and political reasons.