Building a Real USS Enterprise- Price Tag: $1 Trilion

[Andy44]

It appears to be the project of some clueless dreamer. Don't bother overanalyzing it and complaining about feeding third world countries, etc. It's not like you're going to have to pay for this nonsense.

I'd be much more interested if somebody like Zubrin was trying to raise non-government money for a serious Mars exploration program, bypassing NASA and Congress and just doing it. In theory that could happen, but the chances are slim.

 

[jedidia]

Zubrin on Kickstarter? now thre's a thought...

Anyways, I just found the specs. To be fair, they would have been easy to find had I bothered looking a bit better.

Anyways, it says it aims for an acceleration of 0.002 G, which is reasonable enough, and has a wetmass of some 84000+ish tons. Which is as unreasonable as you could expect. Anyways, a quick calculation turned up a cluster of no less than 2377 HiPEP ion drives, which currently weigh in at somewhere around 440 kg a piece. that makes about 1000 tons for propulsion, which I guess isn't too bad considering the whole mass, but there's the reactors lacking...

The trouble is, of course, that I'm getting a lousy 33km/s of delta-v. Those ion drives would have to brush up on their ISP a lot, and they're already pretty mature technology...

 

[rseferino]

I've seen people say on many web sites, that if NASA can not build an enterprise, you better not do anything (!) People want to see an Enterprise NOW, not a shuttle or capsule.

 

[statisticsnerd]

People want to see an Enterprise NOW, not a shuttle or capsule.

That's right. Space shuttles and capsules are very boring.

The masses demand gigantic spaceships like what we are used to seeing on Star Trek and Star Wars. That is the only way to turn around our pathetic existence in space.

Who should be the captain though? Kirk and Picard will probably be dead in 20 years.

 

[T.Neo]

I'd be much more interested if somebody like Zubrin was trying to raise non-government money for a serious Mars exploration program, bypassing NASA and Congress and just doing it. In theory that could happen, but the chances are slim.

Would you really trust such an effort to Zubrin?

Anyways, it says it aims for an acceleration of 0.002 G, which is reasonable enough, and has a wetmass of some 84000+ish tons. Which is as unreasonable as you could expect. Anyways, a quick calculation turned up a cluster of no less than 2377 HiPEP ion drives, which currently weigh in at somewhere around 440 kg a piece. that makes about 1000 tons for propulsion, which I guess isn't too bad considering the whole mass, but there's the reactors lacking...

That's also not counting all the measures that would need to be taken to shed waste heat, which I would imagine would be a very big problem here.

It is sad to think that HVIPS with a toned-down propulsion system of some kind probably stands more of a chance of existing than this does.

The trouble is, of course, that I'm getting a lousy 33km/s of delta-v. Those ion drives would have to brush up on their ISP a lot, and they're already pretty mature technology...

Maybe "ion drive" here is simply a stand-in for "nuclear electric propulsion". The whole thing is nonsensical, so it's very possible that the writer actually intended to use that new electric propulsion concept that begins with a V.

People want to see an Enterprise NOW, not a shuttle or capsule.

Then they need to get real. The Enterprise is to spacecraft what this contraption is to aircraft:

 

[jedidia]

That's also not counting all the measures that would need to be taken to shed waste heat

Right, I completely forgott about that... that thing has no radiators at all! :lol:

 

[Ghostrider]

Who should be the captain though? Kirk and Picard will probably be dead in 20 years.

Technically, they haven't been born yet.:thumbup: