<story><title>Build the &quot;USS Enterprise&quot; in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD</title><url>http://www.buildtheenterprise.org</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>breckinloggins</author><text>There&apos;s a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason.  But if you peel away the &quot;let&apos;s build the Enterprise!&quot; specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound.&lt;p&gt;A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s.  The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what&apos;s worse... we can&apos;t even DO the cool stuff we could do in 69!&lt;p&gt;If you had asked someone in 69 what spaceflight would look like in 2012, they would probably have visions of Moon bases, space stations with gravity wheels, and routine manned trips to Mars.&lt;p&gt;But we have none of those things.  Instead, we have a recently-retired space truck, a space station that looks like a larger version of Skylab, and all of this stuck in low Earth orbit.&lt;p&gt;How. Incredibly. Disappointing.&lt;p&gt;I want to get excited about space again.  I really, really do.  The recent gains made by private companies (with Scaled Composites in &apos;04 and SpaceX today) have helped a lot.  But we shouldn&apos;t shy away from bigger ideas.&lt;p&gt;I know it sounds silly to people in the space business, but the public could really use some futuristic looking space ships and more exciting missions to get excited again.&lt;p&gt;In the end, I believe that private industry will make this happen once space tourism becomes more affordable (simply because the different companies will have to start competing on something other than &quot;look, we&apos;re in space!&quot;).&lt;p&gt;Bigger, cooler looking space ships that are built in orbit and make regular trips to and from Mars would be REALLY exciting.  It doesn&apos;t have to look like the Enterprise.  What about a small Klingon Bird of Prey or even a UFO-style flying saucer?&lt;p&gt;So, no, we don&apos;t need to build the Enterprise, but we DO need to take this as a marketing lesson about why the public seems to yawn when they hear anything about space and Nasa these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>As a huge fan of space I agree we need progress, but we can achieve that by no longer &apos;visiting&apos; space and instead &apos;moving&apos; there.&lt;p&gt;I was talking with a JPL engineer about SpaceX and he said something which really knocked me for a loop. He said &quot;We don&apos;t live in space, we camp there.&quot; And by example he suggested what if there was no food, fuel, or running water in Barstow California. Everyone would have to carry what they expected to use from Los Angeles, stay for a while and then go back to Los Angeles to reload with supplies. Now imagine there is a toll gate on I15 outside San Bernadino that charges you $100M to use the road between LA and Barstow. Now what kind of town would Barstow be? A ghost town.&lt;p&gt;Space, and low earth orbit in particular, is the same way. We don&apos;t have any infrastructure up there. Just a single campsite. Every time we launched the shuttle we took perfectly good fuel and burned it up in the atmosphere because we had no way to take the left overs from the external tank and store them in orbit. If you consider just that one problem, keeping fuel around. You see how far we are from living in space vs just visiting.&lt;p&gt;At $54M/pop SpaceX will make somethings a lot more accessible in space. Putting some infrastructure in space like a gas station and a space tug, will go a lot further.</text></comment>
<story><title>Build the &quot;USS Enterprise&quot; in 20 years, for 1 trillion USD</title><url>http://www.buildtheenterprise.org</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>breckinloggins</author><text>There&apos;s a lot of negativity around this idea, and mostly for good reason.  But if you peel away the &quot;let&apos;s build the Enterprise!&quot; specifics and think about the core of the proposal, I believe it is sound.&lt;p&gt;A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s.  The ships look the same, the suits look the same, the propulsion technologies look the same, and what&apos;s worse... we can&apos;t even DO the cool stuff we could do in 69!&lt;p&gt;If you had asked someone in 69 what spaceflight would look like in 2012, they would probably have visions of Moon bases, space stations with gravity wheels, and routine manned trips to Mars.&lt;p&gt;But we have none of those things.  Instead, we have a recently-retired space truck, a space station that looks like a larger version of Skylab, and all of this stuck in low Earth orbit.&lt;p&gt;How. Incredibly. Disappointing.&lt;p&gt;I want to get excited about space again.  I really, really do.  The recent gains made by private companies (with Scaled Composites in &apos;04 and SpaceX today) have helped a lot.  But we shouldn&apos;t shy away from bigger ideas.&lt;p&gt;I know it sounds silly to people in the space business, but the public could really use some futuristic looking space ships and more exciting missions to get excited again.&lt;p&gt;In the end, I believe that private industry will make this happen once space tourism becomes more affordable (simply because the different companies will have to start competing on something other than &quot;look, we&apos;re in space!&quot;).&lt;p&gt;Bigger, cooler looking space ships that are built in orbit and make regular trips to and from Mars would be REALLY exciting.  It doesn&apos;t have to look like the Enterprise.  What about a small Klingon Bird of Prey or even a UFO-style flying saucer?&lt;p&gt;So, no, we don&apos;t need to build the Enterprise, but we DO need to take this as a marketing lesson about why the public seems to yawn when they hear anything about space and Nasa these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;#62; A big cause of waning public enthusiasm in space is, I believe, that it all still looks like the 60s&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So the solution is to build a ship based on a design from 1965?</text></comment>