Do you want to see the Enterprise in your lifetime?

[Melakon]

And are we talking Kirk's Enterprise, or one of the bloody A, B, C, D, Z's?

And technically, we've already gotten our Enterprise with the original shuttle testbed.

[BillJ]

No.

[R. Star]

King Daniel wrote:

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CANON VIOLATION.

It was built in Iowa. I get to ride a bike up and gaze at it wistfully or I'm not interested

N00b the Enterprise was built at the San Fransisco Fleet Yards.

[BillJ]

R. Star wrote:

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N00b the Enterprise was built at the San Fransisco Fleet Yards.

Apparently that facility is in Iowa.

[MST1987]

Garrovick wrote:

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It would become a massive financial drain for very little return.

Have you not seen the list of technologies that have been developed as a result of what NASA spends its time doing?

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/cu...inventions.htm

http://gizmodo.com/5061120/50-consum...-last-50-years

[JirinPanthosa]

We should definitely build ships capable of getting back and forth from planets in our solar system, but there's no reason to make them the shape of Enterprise just because.

I disagree that space exploration is a huge monetary drain with no practical return. You could apply the same argument to the moon landing, and it not only produced lots of modern technologies, it got us all curious about exploring space and expanding our horizons beyond our own planet. A ship that can go back and forth from Mars is just the next step in that continuum.

Now, if we want to go to other solar systems we have to deal with the small issue of time dilation first.

[Garrovick]

MST1987 wrote:

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Have you not seen the list of technologies that have been developed as a result of what NASA spends its time doing?

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/cu...inventions.htm

http://gizmodo.com/5061120/50-consum...-last-50-years

Yes, I've seen lists like these before and I am very glad that NASA has made these advances. I'm not for one minute saying that NASA should close up shop. But that doesn't mean that we should committ ourselves to a massive, truly massive, never-ending financial boondoggle for them. I say again, we need somewhere to actually go first that is worth that kind of a committment.

Going to the moon was a much different deal. We went, but there was never the intent during the Apollo program of establishing any kind of permanent human presence on the moon. But establishing a permanent base on the Moon, or Mars? You have to not only figure in the construction costs of the "Enterprise" itself, but you have to factor in the construction costs of the base, keeping it supplied, keeping the population fed, maintenance, etc. etc. And you would have to figure that those huge costs would continue on year after year, indefinitely. We are never (barring terraforming) going to be able to get Mars or the Moon to be permanently inhabitable by a large group of humans without massive and ongoing logistical support. No amount of relatively minor technological advances is worth that cost.

I'm not saying it will never happen, in fact I believe we will someday come up with a realistic means of travel to other planets. But not like this. And again, if we were to find some kind of M-class planet orbiting, say, Alpha Centauri, then I would be 110% in favor of sending an expedition to it as soon as realistically possible.

[JirinPanthosa]

Here's the thing about traveling to other planets.

We can get to a planet that's 20 light years away, and have it so from the astronaut's perspective only a few months have passed. But from Earth's perspective, more than 20 years will have passed. So it is realistic to travel to other planets, but not in a manner where the astronaut can make the return trip in our lifetimes.

Unless there's some way to cheat relativity that hasn't been discovered yet. I suppose I can't prove it's impossible but I'm not holding my breath.

[Gary7]

^ Very true, something that Star Trek completely overlooks, because it's not expeditious for the stories. Anytime you travel such great distances, time moves much more slowly for you relative to people on Earth. When Picard made it back to Earth to visit his relatives after the Borg incident, his brother Robert would have been long dead! In truth, when Voyager returned home they would have been greeted by the great grand children of all the people they had known.

I think this was why Lost In Space had the premise of a whole family traveling together, because they'd never see each other again if separated. Candidate astronauts for real high speed space travel will either have very loose ties to family or travel with a loved one on board.

[Leroy]

Gary7 wrote:

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Very true, something that Star Trek completely overlooks, because it's not expeditious for the stories. Anytime you travel such great distances, time moves much more slowly for you relative to people on Earth. When Picard made it back to Earth to visit his relatives after the Borg incident, his brother Robert would have been long dead! In truth, when Voyager returned home they would have been greeted by the great grand children of all the people they had known.

In Trek when warp drive is used the crew never encounters time dilation I guess because of how the fictional technology works, they never fly at relativistic speeds so time doesn't go slower for the crew compared to someone still on earth.

[Anji]

You are kidding about this petition, right?

Don't we have a bad enough reputation about being a bunch of crackpots already???

Yes, I do want to see an Enterprise in my lifetime...and I'm not talking about the physical ship.

I'm talking about a group of people who are intelligent enough to overcome their differences and solve them through compassionate and logical means.

[JirinPanthosa]

I think in Star Trek the idea behind warp drive is that the 'Subspace bubble' is a localized shortcut through space and the ship is actually traveling at low impulse. But, 'full impulse' is also supposed to be something close to light speed, and in that case, there should be time dilation.

I like the way Battlestar Galactica addressed it. A group of people from 4000 years ago got to the colonies by 'Traveling at sublight, relativistic speeds'.

[jayrath]

Garrovick wrote:

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We went, but there was never the intent during the Apollo program of establishing any kind of permanent human presence on the moon.

Disagreed. Mission Control fully expected that the next step would be a permanent moon base. See the two excellent documentaries based on flight control director Gene Krantz' book, "Failure is Not an Option."

[Spearsab]

USS Enterprise the real Deal!!

Well, not yet. There is an effort to fund and pursue the building of the USS Enterprise.

http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/

There was, until 1/21/2013, a petition on:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition
to
"do a feasibility study and conceptual design of the Gen1 USS Enterprise interplanetary spaceship."

If you have already know about this. Great, Spreed the word. If you have not, Check out the petition and the Build-the-Enterprise website and see for your self.

Alone we can not achieve the dream of realizing a real USS Enterprise, however together through a collective effort we can create awareness, discussion and mission to build a REAL USS Enterprise.

Your thoughts? Is it viable, can it be done, is it worth it?

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Deja Vu.