PowerSwitch

I have a feeling that this is a load of anaerobic digestion feedstock and it won't happen. However, the person involved, given the level of exposure, will get rather rich. Then, after all the promises, when it doesn't happen but the person(s) involved get rich, we can start the myth of their being bought by the oil industry in order to "suppress their technology". (ahh, our colonial cousins -- is it true that the US standard dictionary doesn't include the world 'gullible'?)

Beam me up Scotty?? You could probably make a wonderful hybrid of the films Star Trek and Soylent Green where people are"beamed up" and then go missing because their energy was being used to power society as all the other finite energy resources were exhausted.

The final frontier? Trillion-dollar plan to build Starship Enterprise

US engineer unveils ambitious, if unfeasible, proposal to build spaceship from original Star Trek series over two decades

Charles Arthur, Guardian On-line, Friday 1st June 2012


In its time, the original Star Trek series has inspired many inventions – the flip-open mobile phone (based on the crew's communicators), handheld medical diagnostics (based on its tricorder) – but now an engineer of 30 years standing says we should go the whole way and build the Starship Enterprise.

The cost? A trillion dollars (£648bn) – but if spread over 20 years, argues "Dan", who has proposed the idea, it would cost only 0.27% of the US's gross domestic product, or about half what the Apollo project did in the 1960s.

Somebody tell me how the Star Trek type design of spaceship is even practical in real life without artificial gravity.

Sure they can rotate the saucer section but wouldn't it be easier to have a design with proper rotational symmetry where the whole thing can rotate? Less potential for friction which would require energy to keep the whole thing going, if the lower section and nacelles remain rotationally static.

Wow! As the world falls apart, people indulge in such ridiculous fantasies...
culture of 2 year-olds...

moimitou wrote:Wow! As the world falls apart, people indulge in such ridiculous fantasies...
culture of 2 year-olds...

Agree, to build a partly functioning replica would be possible but hugely expensive, and there seems little point in so doing.

To build a fully functioning spaceship based on the fictional one, with similar performance and facilities, is not only impossible at present but is likely to remain so.
Faster than light travel, gravity control, and teleportation are generally accepted to be impossible.
And even if in the future it becomes possible, it appears most unlikely in the lifetime of anyone alive today.

I think this is about the most practical sort of replica!

JohnB wrote:I think this is about the most practical sort of replica!

That's the wrong one! That's the ship from the 2006 digital remastering of the original series, not the more plain design of the original 1960s motion camera effect...

....arrgggh!!, I'm a Trekkie!!

mobbsey wrote:

JohnB wrote:I think this is about the most practical sort of replica!

That's the wrong one! That's the ship from the 2006 digital remastering of the original series, not the more plain design of the original 1960s motion camera effect...

....arrgggh!!, I'm a Trekkie!!

Sorry, I've been watching Next Generation and DS9 recently, not the original series!

Let them build the damn replica I say.

Fill it with the brightest scientists and engineers and let them figure out all the hard stuff on the way.

At least when the human race has expired there will be something apart from voyager out there to let the rest of the universe know we tried.

Lets face it, small details like the laws of physics shouldn't get in the way of ambition.

It doesn't seem to stand in the way of our current scheme of things, so why should it be any different in space?

To Boldly Go!

Just to add... I think it's the idea, the notion, that is interesting, not the details.

I really do think that we need to go explore - the world is full and has no new frontiers: Frontiers are mankinds lifeblood. Forgetting the details for the moment may just bring nations together and give a purpose to humanity rather than wallowing in the great decline.

Worth a shot - even if all the details are fantasy. Just get the project underway with virtually unlimited money and the effect could be revolutionary for future generations.

The world going to hell in a handcart, but a dream being kept alive?

It is an interesting thought.

Expansionist ambitions of exploration and discovery (with the connotations of possession which that conjurers up) are a product of an unconstrained ecological system -- e.g. the 'individualist' USA; a system without constraints is typified by cultures which stress the need to accept "what is" -- e.g. Buddhist SE. Asia.

The deeper significance of this article is that it reflects the delusion need for fantasy in a world whose complexity and general existential anomie alienates us from the world around us -- this making fantastical conceptions of every reality more palatable than objective reality.

But Mobbsey, without it we would not be who we are.

Talk simple please, there are children watching.

maudibe wrote:Talk simple please, there are children watching.

You mean like 1 Corinthians 13:11, or a more general principle of "no existentialist philosophy in front of the children"?

mobbsey wrote:Expansionist ambitions of exploration and discovery (with the connotations of possession which that conjurers up) are a product of an unconstrained ecological system -- e.g. the 'individualist' USA; a system without constraints is typified by cultures which stress the need to accept "what is" -- e.g. Buddhist SE. Asia.

The deeper significance of this article is that it reflects the delusion need for fantasy in a world whose complexity and general existential anomie alienates us from the world around us -- this making fantastical conceptions of every reality more palatable than objective reality.

What a load of tosh.

It makes perfectly logical sense to start exploring and settling other planets. Why?

Because it is inevitable that at some point Earth will get hit by a meteoroid or some other disaster and human life will be wiped out.

People say that there isn't enough money/energy. Again a load of tosh.

Even if you put 1% of the world resources each year into a space programme for ten years, you could get something going. 1% to ensure that humanity gets of Earth onto the moon or mars.

Come on, that is pretty realistic. I'm sure it is quite easy for the world to use less shit we consume and actually invest it in a historic-making programme like the Moon journeys in the 60's.

There are a lot of international visitors here at Chateau Renewable at the moment. While it's all jolly good fun, I shudder to think what the collective C-footprint (or indeed, other-resources-footprint) would be. And, frankly, none of this airyfripperage is exactly a matter of extreme urgency.

If the population were, for a year, to give up passenger-flying completely, how much energy and resources would that save us (I wonder) and would it be enough for, say, getting a credible foothold on Mars?