SCIFI.radio Newswire
One engineer thinks it might take twenty years – but says it’s doable
Some may call him a dreamer, others may call him a crackpot, but an Engineer known as BTE-Dan, claims that he knows how we can build a first generation starship based on the famous U.S.S. Enterprise of Star Trek fame. Dan has established a website called BuildTheEnterprise.org, where he lays out in intricate detail his ideas and what existing technologies he feels can be used to build a real life starship. He admits that our first Enterprise won’t be able to leave our solar system, but it would give us a permanent mobile platform which would allow us to setup a space station on Mars and possibly do more depending on how technology develops over the next 20 years.
The amount of information he’s compiled is considerable, so we’ll do our best to summarize it. Dan estimates that it would take approximately twenty-years from concept to finished ship, and cost approximately $1 trillion dollars USD to complete. Using current technologies such as Ion Engines for propulsion, triple walled hulls for radiation shielding, and rotating magnetized wheels in the saucer section to provide for gravity, he feels that the ship would be functional and could provide enough space for a crew of up to a 1,000 people. Building a real life Enterprise would be a technological marvel in itself, of course there are many concerns since the design of the fictional ship was made with other future technologies in mind. Would a real Enterprise be able to exist without dampening fields, or structural integrity fields to help hold the space-frame together even at sub-light speeds?
Dan’s Enterprise admittedly won’t be encountering warp-speeds or Romulan war-birds firing volleys of photon-torpedoes; but based on his basic designs and ideas for making the ship a reality, there’s still many concerns over whether it would be realistic to start now, or wait twenty years when we may have some of the very tech we want so badly from the show. Technology which may make a U.S.S. Enterprise more feasible and possible to build, discuss in comments or hit us up on Facebook to let us know your opinion on Dan’s theories.
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