"Could a 21st Century USS Enterprise Really Fly?" Topic

This guy is very optimistic.

buildtheenterprise.org/faq

Or naif?

Amicalement
Armand

If you can rebuild the Titanic as a tourist attraction, why not a full size USS Enterprise?

It would look odd sitting on the ground, but so what?

Very slowly, since anything can "fly" in space, once you get it out of the gravity well…..

Landing safely is the true trick.

I suspect it will not be like on the TV show though, winging to other star systems, galaxies, or universes. Probably not to more than one, or two planets in our own system either.

Still, I'd love to see a small "starship" built, to explore our own galaxy. It should probably be a lot smaller than the Enterprise, in terms of the crew, but the size of the vessel seems about right for long-range missions.

I'm also disappointed no one seems to be working on a project, with any deadline, to send probes to the nearest stars and planets, a few light years away.

I really wish they would get on with that, since I'd like to see some of the data from those, before I expire.

I really wish they would get on with the mission to Mars – It might make the trip before I expire.

I can remember my dad getting me out of bed to watch the moon landing live, as a tiny tot.

I want to see the first steps of humankind onto another world, it could be done in ten years if some nations set their mind to it.

The journeys to other star systems – might get there in a hundred years… might be a bit far off for me to see that. I seem to remember that Voyager took some years just to leave our solar system, so getting to a nearby star other than our sun is pretty much in the realms of Sci Fi at the moment… unless someone is sitting on some supertech.

At the current rate we'll be back on the moon around 2050, Mars possibly before 2100, the rest, who knows …

I would hope they could get to a nearby star system with a probe, or three, in 15 – 20 years, and then beam back the info, in a year or two, given the speed of light, but it looks like that won't be happening, given the current lack of a meaningful space program.

I looked at the page and, in a word, the guy is nuts. Seriously crazy. No clue whatsoever.

Could we build it, sure, but the thing is a horrible design for any realistic propulsion system.

Without referencing anything, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think, with an ion drive, we could get a probe up to 10% of the speed of light. Then it would have to turn around and decelerate half way there.

Alpha Centauri is something like 4.5 light years away from us. So figure maybe 60 years to get there, 4.5 years to receive data from the probe. So you're looking at 65 years before we'd get any info about the system.

And that's if we launched a probe today. So you better eat right and get your exercise if you want to be around for that!

Scott

What about a different mission plan for your probe to Alpha Centauri… Accelerate and no deceleration step, blow right past and on to other systems. if you accept 10% of light speed and give it enough initial fuel (and a couple of big batteries) it will get there in about 35 years…

Mind you I am pretty certain there is nothing there that we would be interested in.

I read a science article the other day that there is a lot (relatively speaking) of naturally occuring anti-matter being generated around jupiter and Saturn (and to a smaller degree Earth) by the collision of cosmic rays with the atmospheres and magnetic fields of those planets. If it could be collected it would be the fuel to get probes to the stars (eventually, we're still talking sublight here).

Well, there's not really much money in interstellar exploration (or at least any chance of a return in investments within a reasonable amount of time), so private enterprise won't come through like with the recent announcement about asteroid mining. And the federal government can't even get astronauts or supplies up to the ISS without paying the Russians to do it.

I doubt we'll be sending any probes to other solar systems any time soon.

I'm not sure how close we are to anti-matter powered engines, but I believe ion drives are at least technically feasible.

Ion drives exist now. They're used on some satellites. They have extremely low thrust but, since they act continuously, they can theoretically achieve velocities substantially higher than chemical rockets. They could very well have application in interplanetary trips.

However we have nothing that can accelerate anything to anywhere near 10% the speed of light (Ion drives top out at 90,000 m/s or so). We barely have a theoretical idea about how to do such a thing, let alone any engineering ability to even begin such a project. Interstellar distances are seriously huge. It's very easy to say "light year" without having any true respect for the distances involved.

Nukes to the stars! The old Project Orion:

link

"Later studies indicate that the top cruise velocity that can theoretically be achieved by a thermonuclear Orion starship, assuming no fuel is saved for slowing back down, is about 8% to 10% of the speed of light (0.08-0.1c).[2] An atomic (fission) Orion can achieve perhaps 3%-5% of the speed of light. A nuclear pulse drive starship powered by matter-antimatter pulse units would be theoretically capable of obtaining a velocity between 50% to 80% of the speed of light. In each case saving fuel for slowing down halves the max. speed.

At 0.1c, Orion thermonuclear starships would require a flight time of at least 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri"

As far as I know, no nuclear propulsion system has ever been built and tested (certainly not one that has detonated thousands of explosions). As far as antimatter goes, that's even more pie-in-the-sky, where does this antimatter come from that we speak of?

CERN states that, when fully operational, their facilities are capable of producing ten million antiprotons per minute or 100 billion years to produce 1 gram antihydrogen.

No one's going to the stars on that.

For now and the conceivable future it's ion drives, solar sails and this solar system.