One Trillion Dollar Plans Unveiled To Build The Enterprise

 Sci Fi To Reality

An industrious Stark Trek fan has created a website proposing a new direction for human space exploration based on the classic Starship Enterprise. Featuring every detail, the first Enterprise has been planned out to the smallest degree, from the inner workings of the 'gravity wheel' to the coverings on the exterior shielding, as well as the outline of the first ten missions and the political problems that will have to be overcome.

An anonymous electrical and systems engineer going only by the moniker BTE-Dan has uploaded incredibly detailed plans for a full-scale, functioning Starship Enterprise that he claims could be built in 20 years.

The Build the Enterprise website  features specifications, costs, mission plans and funding strategies, all suggesting that a serious amount of thought has gone into creating a real world counterpart to the icon spaceship of the TV and movie series, Star Trek.

BTE-Dan rejects the International Space Station for its lack of gravity and cramped quarters, describing its toilet facilities as "comical and primitive," and visualizes how the money may have been better spent. A full-scale USS Enterprise similar in form, but different in function to that of the TV and movie series; that would operate as "a spaceship, a space station and a spaceport," and be home to a thousand people.

Although the form of the "Gen1 Enterprise" is nearly identical to the theatrical version, it would be functionally very different.

First, the main nuclear-powered ion engine (boasting 1.5 GW of power) would strictly limit the Enterprise to intra-solar system missions, being incapable of anything approaching faster-than-light speeds. Dan does claim that the Gen1 would be capable of reaching Mars from Earth within ninety days, and reaching the Moon in three. Comparatively rudimentary compared to the NCC-1701 portrayed on screen, Dan's Gen1 proposal is similar to the Tricorder X Prize in scope, taking its cues from science fiction, but scaling the technology to that which is known and achievable.

The website author claims that the Gen1 would have ample living space and could generate gravity of 1 g. This would be created by a rotating magnetically-suspended gravity wheel housed within the Enterprise's familiar saucer-shaped section. A counter-rotating ring is also proposed in order to prevent the body of the ship rotating. Dan suggests that the second ring might be filled with water, propellant, or other materials that would be needed aboard ship.





SOURCE  Build The Enterprise via Gizmag

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