The Real Starfleet?

[urbandefault]

Starfleet has had land vehicles on Earth for decades.

LINK
LINK

 

[publiusr]

I'm a big fan of the show, but undertaking this project would be a completely foolish waste of money.

Not necessarily. The way BTE Dan wanted, yes--but there is another way.

I would go with two new build SHLLVs, one of them Sea Dragon--a very large pressure-fed rocket that would be cheaper because it uses shipyard technology, as opposed to aerospace tech;

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Masao/media/ConSeadragon.jpg.html

One or two of its upper stages and you have a secondary hull--plus it would drop payload costs.

The primary hull would simply be an empty Phil Bono saucer: http://www.astronautix.com/b/bonosaucer.html
This design allows for flat--very wide payloads, like monolithic dishes we would need anyway.

There was even a Shuttle-C design that looked a bit like the Enterprise:
https://www.aiaa.org/uploadedFiles/...uttle_Launches/ShuttleVariationsFinalAIAA.pdf

See page 6-7

 

[Blip]

I'd love for us to start a Starfleet and have a Federation if we ever found intelligent life. But basic human nature would have to change drastically. We can't even agree on basic reality on this planet.

Honestly we're probably the Terran Empire, if we ever got our shit together and got off the planet.

As Leonard Nimoy once said:

"I predict the future of this earthly human race
Is that having made a mess of Earth
They'll move to outer space
Well there goes the neighborhood
Totally, completely, absolutely, irrevocably, highly illogical..."