Trekkie wants to build USS Enterprise … in twenty years A US Star Trek fan has launched an online project aimed at building a working replica of the USS Enterprise … in twenty years. “BTE Dan”, as the fan identifies himself at the buildtheenterprise.org site, says he's tired of stagnation in the world's space programs and feels that shooting for an iconic project like building a …
Say, I think that you've struck onto a quasi "Fountain of Youth". With enough energy and safe travel paths, the highest bidders could buy their educated, wealthy ways on to missions either as specialists or as cryo-passengers. But, a problem would be in the inability to actually *live* among those who are aging in Earth/Real-time ways.
Another interesting idea comes to mind (One that might have been addressed in various sci-fi shows over the decades, maybe Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Trek (Voyager, specifically), and others): suppose that prior to the Alpha Centauri or other travels, a huge mesh of comms relays was built. Now, when the traveling ship is ramping up to near .c, and then is cruising along, imagine they are communicating in near-real time from each end's perspective. Is that possible? If so, the traveling crews would go nuts dealing with people who may seem to be on endless, constant, rapid shift and retirement activity. Or, would that work the other way around? Or, would it not even be a problem? I'm suspecting it would be a problem. Especially for morale on the ship.
Also, does this (depending on the distances involved) nix the ideas of generation ships/multi-generation ships? What stars systems would be a logical cut-off/threshold for when a generation ship would be chosen vs non-generation ships?
Sean Ellis & Chemist: You probably have the right of it; I thought the energy requirement I'd computed seemed rather low, since I'd originally considered that the actual energy required would be a sizeable fraction of the Sun's entire output for several weeks' worth. I must have dropped a zero or three somewhere...
Unfortunately I didn't have time to check the figures and revise my calculations though, since I posted my original comment while at work, so I'll go with your revisions and agree that it's a Reg-unit fuckton of energy required to achieve this kind of acceleration!
As to a drive mechanism, the sort of thing I had in mind is what I call a RAP - Relativistic Accelerated Particle - drive. I imagine something along the lines of some kind of synchrotron based around a few hundred thousand tons of microscopic black hole, at which you fire ionised hydrogen nuclei (eg protons) almost tangentially to the black hole's event horizon. This would accelerate said protons to very close to the speed of light.
At such speeds, relativistic mass dilation comes into play, to the point where you could potentially increase the effective mass of a proton all the way up to a few kilograms. Then you fire said proton out the back, generating several kilograms of Newtonian thrust for the price of 1 proton. With such a system, an Olympic swimming pools' worth of hydrogen (perhaps stored as water or ammonia) would give you potentially years of 1G continuous thrust.
(BTW I hereby claim this post as prior art on this drive system to prevent some greedy bastard patenting it in future!)
I agree, and the enterprise design is totally wrong for a constant acceleration ship, they would be walking on the walls, making it a thin long, tall ship with lots of climbing!!!
Go ahead with a open source space ship design, but instead of basing it off a fictional ship, lets design it around the the technology available to us now..
First, we can't get anywhere near 99% c. More like 10%, (and even that is purely on paper in wet dream fantasies that ignore the astounding problems presented in engineering, materials, and economics). It's not just a question of acceleration.
second, even at that "low" speed, bumping into even a tiny gram of dust would be like being shot at with a nuclear bomb.
As far as we know the density of gram-sized dust in interstellar space is low enough that one wouldn't hit one (to a high degree of probability).
Much smaller dust would be dangerous. Carrying your reaction mass as ice frozen into a long thin cylinder with the crew quarters at the back end ought to work, as long as none of the incoming dust generated enough energy to blow the whole mass to pieces, or enough gammas to fry the crew.
It's a great idea but probably better done when we've nailed the basics of space travel better and can afford to have some fun with it. It's nice to think that one day the most beautiful ship ever to grace the screen galaxy could make its' maiden voyage - 40 Eridani A sounds like a nice place to visit..
So much for this guy's pet project - I think we should drop things back to a more reasonable level. I'm now off to register www.buildoptimusprime.org
According to that last TV version, Galactica survived because it was still running Windows 2000 whilst the Cylons released a virus that crippled all the schmucks running Metro, all of whose lusers and MSCE admins had no clue about fixing without a GUI or auto recovery disc and animated wizard.
In simplistic terms given todays technoiogy yes you could build a small "bolt together" craft in space up at the present international space station.It would however consume great amounts of resources in both materials and funds to get the thing even off the ground ,much like the international space station itself.
Id think even if it were viable you would be talking at the moment of a one way trip for astronauts, as resources and payload would negate the ability for a return ticket.........so whos up for volunteering?
all you have to do the hollow out the asteroid as you travel, throwing the waste rock out of the back as fast as possible, but trying to avoid hitting anything important. This type of propulsion is called the "Flinger" method, no expensive rocket fuel needed, just a rail gun very similar to the one the US Navy are testing.
I always thought a Babylon 5 esque ship would be most likely as a first gen space ship. Blocky in design like earths warships now, just like submarines but with a rotating section. Afterall space will be dominated by the military most of the time.
And then fighters and small craft will come after that much like the transport planes of today, or the star fury with engines on the various pylons and a centrally located squishy pilot to avoid the G force created by turning and thrust.
Star trek afterall is hundreds of years of evolution in ship design in a make believe world, we have to develop so much more before that.
Considering that the only engines we will be able to use are thrust-based one (even if they are ION engines), then the design of the Enterprise will give off-center propulsion.
Lousy for a spacecraft, where the sources of thrust have to be located in such a manner that the sum of the thrusts goes through the center of gravity of the craft. This will not happen with two dorsal thrusters.
You're all missing the best candidate for our first interplanetary space craft ..... Prometheus (from Stargate). imo it's far more adapable to current technologies:
Length: 195 meters, Width: 80 meters, Height/depth: 65 meters
http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/98/potd/1167437882_28.jpg
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Prometheus
:-)
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