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This model of the fictional Starship Enterprise was used in the weekly hourlong "Star Trek" TV series that aired September 1966 to June 1969. It is now on display in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
If the Death Star went up against the Starship Enterprise, who would win? When it comes to White House petition drives, it's the Death Star.
The petition calling on the federal government to build a fully operational "Star Wars" battle station attracted more than 34,000 signatures, forcing the White House to issue a hilarious response. But a similar petition supporting a real-life version of Captain James T. Kirk's favorite ride fell far short of the 25,000-signature requirement when the one-month deadline passed on Monday.
At last count, the Enterprise petition had 7,200 signatures, according to its creator, a Trek fan known publicly as BTE-Dan. "I’m disappointed that it didn't reach 25,000, because I would have genuinely liked to have seen the Obama administration respond to it," Dan told NBC News in an email.
Dan is the webmaster behind the "Build the Enterprise" website — and he says he's serious about wanting NASA to do a feasibility study for an Enterprise-like spaceship.
"I really do think that building an interplanetary spaceship that follows the form of the USS Enterprise would be uniquely inspirational to Americans, and people around the world, too," he wrote. "Once its construction started in space, people would be fascinated by it, and it would constantly be in the news. And it might well inspire a new generation of Americans to study the STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering, math]."
Dan likes the basic idea behind the Obama administration's "We the People" program, which provides an opportunity for petitioners to get a response from the White House if enough people sign on.
"Unfortunately, having a short 30-day window to gather signatures makes the petition system geared to getting high signature counts mainly for the most emotionally charged current events of the moment, like pro-gun control, or anti-gun control, or the desire of some to deport Piers Morgan," he said. "People are motivated by humor, too, like in the Piers Morgan case and for the Death Star petition, and there is nothing wrong with having some fun with the petitions. But I’d like to see the system changed so that more substantive petitions get considered."
Maybe the problem was that BTE-Dan's proposal was too substantive, especially for a concept that sounds like classic science fiction. The same issue might be working against another space-themed petition, calling on the federal government to build a nuclear thermal rocket. (NASA actually pursued a nuclear-rocket development program in the 1960s, and may do so again.) That campaign has attracted fewer than 2,300 of the required 25,000 signatures with 10 days to go before the deadline.
One thing's for sure: It'll be even harder for slightly wacky petitions like the Death Star plea, or an earlier effort to crack the alien conspiracy, to make their way into the spotlight in the future. That's because the White House raised the signature requirement from 25,000 to 100,000 last week. BTE-Dan's effort just might stand as the most ambitious effort to build a real-life Starship Enterprise until the year 2063 — when eccentric genius Zefram Cochrane achieves the first warp drive flight and brings the Vulcans in for first contact.
More about starships and petition drives:
- Scientists say warp drive is more feasible than they thought
- Empire strikes back with response to Death Star petition
- Video: White House petition calls for VP reality TV show
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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I am a Star Trek fan and am glad this petition failed. We have not yet developed warp drive or transporters or anti-gravity or Castroginium, etc., etc. We HAVE developed smartphones that are far superior to the "communicators" that we supposedly would have 200 years from now. We are also close to developing something close to what the "tricorders" did--likely with plug-in sensors and apps for our smartphones. Building a Starship Enterprise where the occupants float around in microgravity and exposed to radiation would be a horrendous waste of money.
Yeah, right. Like Sprint is gonna get you five bars on Ceti Alpha V. ;-)
Indeed. It's pointless to construct something that merely looks like the Starship Enterprise, with none of its capabilities.
(Same for a Star Wars 'Death Star,' except that the last thing we need is a device that can destroy entire planets in one shot, even if we really could build one...)
Now, one day, maybe, just maybe it will be possible to create a spacecraft capable of some form of FTL travel, that has a sub-light reactionless drive (impulse engines must be that), some sort of 'generated gravity' inside, maybe even teleportation, and utilize other physics that we either barely know, or utterly don't know to be possible...and it STILL may turn out that the best design for such a thing, won't look like our notions of a Federation starship.
Google "Cargo Cult"
Thus proving that Star Wars has more dedicated fans, and thus, is better. Argument over.
Oh, so building a Millenium Falcon (or Death Star) replica that can't make the jump to hyperspace and its occupants float around in microgravity and exposed to radiation makes sense to you (not to mention that building a Death Star would bankrupt EVERY economy in the entire world)? LMFAO
Star Wars if science fantasy, in other words, there is no hope of anything in it being real. 90% of the fiction in Star Trek has come true and are already in use. Communicators, tricorders, transporter (Einstein transported a boat 15 yards), weaponized lasers, bluetooth headset (smaller than the ones Ohura was wearing) artificial intelligence, sliding doors!!
What did Star Wars have? X-Wing fighters that can bank in space wtih no atmosphere and laser lights that can be broken in to segments or sits on a handle for fencing?
Star Wars may have more fans, but you missed the purpose and the reality that the Enterprise is actually an acheivable goal. There's not enough metal on this planet to build a Death Star the size of the moon.
No fairs using oars!
(Einstein transported a boat 15 yards),
Proof please. Albert never even accepted quantum physics.
"What did Star Wars have? X-Wing fighters that can bank in space wtih no atmosphere..."
Um, Star Trek ships unnecessarily 'bank' when changing direction, too, Indeed, the Enterprise-E looks especially graceful when doing so.
In any case, neither of them was actually trying to be predictive...if you think so, where is the advanced human genetic engineering of the 1990's?
@Frank Glover,
"In any case, neither of them was actually trying to be predictive...if you think so, where is the advanced human genetic engineering of the 1990's?"
Why obviously our "Genetic Geniuses" are inhabiting Congress and North Korea as we speak...........Next.
Many of the technologies needed would have been developed along the way, as stated by the author of the petition. Nevertheless, I am kind of glad to see it fail because the plan does have some follies that would prove quite problematic. However, I do hope that eventually this petition does get passed (in a better, more advanced form) so the Government or any other private company can see the benefits of a "Enterprise" (get the pun ;) ) such as this.
DUH !
The creator of BTE is a little too optimistic about our current technology. He has a page on how we can have a nuclear reactor to power the Enterprise with electricity, but current nuclear plants requires 3 BILLION GALLONS of water a day to prevent a meltdown disaster. He mentioned that the outer hull would be a radiator to dissipate heat into space. In the vacuum of space, there is no atmosphere or particles to transfer the heat into space. The Enterprise would essentially heat up and glow like lightbulb until it starts to radiate heat the same way the sun is. The Enterprise would be a floating, and melted wreckage.
What bugs me most about his site is that he's already defined NASA's missions for them like he's an authority. Every other sentence he types includes the word "thus" like the conclusion he makes is definitive.
The other problem with this petition of wanting NASA to do a feasibiity study is that THEY ALREADY HAVE DONE A STUDY!!!. They started research on a warp engine already. We have robots on Mars. We have an international space station to experiment on long term space survival. The galaxy is already being mapped out. Believe it or not BTE-Dan, NASA is WAY ahead of you.
Not all nuclear reactors require anywhere near 3 billion gallons of water. The reactors aboard Navy vessels are closed systems which only use the coolant already on board.
And as for dissipating heat in space, you're correct that the vacuum of space would not allow convective cooling. However, radiative heat transfer would still work just fine and doesn't need to 'glow like a light bulb' to operate. The various space craft already out in space have used it just fine. Besides, we're not talking about dissipating a humongous amount of heat. Most of the heat energy would be used to generate power and provide the atmosphere control heat.
"but current nuclear plants requires 3 BILLION GALLONS of water a day to prevent a meltdown disaster...."
Where exactly do you get that figure from?
Remember, the whole purpose of commercial power reactors is to heat water to steam for electrical generation. and it can be in a closed loop, if you can cool the coolant in some way. (indeed, there must be a closed primary loop and heat exchanger to a secondary loop, for radiation safety reasons.)
Now, this is not the stuff of starships, but find out how relatively small the reactors in submarines are...and smaller still are NERVA nuclear rocket reactors. They all are meant to heat a working fluid to do mechanical work (in NERVA's case, it escapes to create thrust), and even when shut down, still require a lesser flow of said fluid to carry away 'afterheat,' but that a long way from what you assert.
Good news; just what I expected.
If Star Wars was scrapped, how did they expect this crap to get built. Star Trek is lame.
But yet BTE will continue the fight from his parents basement.
Then I guess he'll just have to build it himself.
An "Enterprise" would certainly be a far better use of money, time and resources than a "Death Star", all things considered.
The human race just isn't responsible or mature enough to have a "Death Star".
However, due to the sheer number of technical limitations - an "Enterprise" would be a sub-light ship, taking generations to leave the solar system, yet alone find strange new worlds (to commercially exploit), or seek out new life and new civilizations (to make war with, or commercially exploit), and boldly go where no one has gone before (how come no one ever pointed out that even in the 26th Century, it's still inappropriate to end a sentence with a preposition?) And while we would likely learn a great deal more than we would ever hope to otherwise, the people aboard would ultimately be "disposable", as they would have to contend with inter-spacial radiations and all manner of risks and hazards we've only barely considered, and none of them would likely live long enough to see Earth again.
"The human race just isn't responsible or mature enough to have a "Death Star"."
Well, it's irrelevant. With existing technology, and known physics, we can have neither.
(Oh. and we've been told more than once that a Constellation-class starship can do serious damage from orbit with phaser fire...)
Which is still different than reducing a planet to debris with a single shot... and still irrelevant, as you pointed out, as we've yet to build a simple phaser, let alone a combat-worthy laser weapon.
Beam me up Scottie
Right.
I suspect some people may be more concerned with all the money they stood to garner. Sort of makes my point from an earlier post, perhaps not. If they are sincere, this will not phase them. Meanwhile, It's really been a while since we had an honest to goodness engineer in the drivers seat. This white house is NOT concerned with science (let alone facts, but it goes to current social process does it not? (meaning few today do)). Besides funding is ONLY one aspect, albeit an important one. They'll be back with another idea, don't worry too much.
Meanwhile, I have not dropped my project, but I did realize that a three football field wide saucer was not a starting point. And to boot, I for one do not think that we should expect it to "be" a 1701x. Sure warp and transporter and subspace (to mention a few) technologies look great, they, in and of themselves are not deal breakers....I'll draw away from my project for now to make some observations. A large vessel, while difficult to construct would have several advantages that could dispel much of what so many psuedo scientists claim to be insurmountable obstacles to say manned mars travel.....for one thing you could hide deep in the center from radiation (just kidding but correct)....you could field more than three people, let's face it, the apollo missions were not exploration excursions like the initial polar expeditions....nay, set down, climb outside, maybe take a short drive, climb back in and go home. NO week long stays were in the works as far as I know, let alone a prolonged geological expedition. More space for engines. Grow your own food (maybe, maybe end up starving)...more room for Extra supplies. Bigger antennas (and Transmitters, as a ham, I like that benefit for sure). bottom line, heading out beyound home in a tin can is no way to rock and roll. Were americans, we'll eventually get around to doing it in style. Too bad frank g.
Let's face it, we do have some sort of a space policy but most would agree, at this point it SUCKS, and we know why, it'll be 16 years of numbskull idiocracy when O leaves. I am a BIG supporter of robotics so telepresence missions make more than sense to me. BUT, nothing is gonna say defacto like boots on the ground, in fact it appears to me that if we had boots shovels and new engines (and some REAL leadership) we'd stand a 52% chance of digging up some martian fossils.
Me, I am on track. I figure it will take three lifetimes to make a galaxy class starship. The sooner we get started the sooner America will have one. Think russia, china, india (of done this before), france, spain england etc don't want a galaxy class starship? Think again. It's only a matter of time, but it will fly right by if your not watching. Finally, question science. When someone says these are the facts, look square in the eye and say, prove it. Don't set your goals on someone else's bias because 100% of time it's manipulation. For example, when I solve a gamma equations, I use special relativity formulae, like every one else, I understand it well. But in my gut I know the big E was wrong on the speed limit thing...I have only one small data set to support my position so that makes it impossible to prove against an entire army of pensioned grant proposing monkeys, So I don't go around saying that c is slow compared to say gravity, and will naturally concede the point, BUT...I know what my data set is, it stems from the venus mapper mission. But no biggie, one thing is for sure, when it's time, we'll see it and understand it, till then, it's like ancient egyptians pouring hydrosulfuric acid in a pit to etch gold for plating....little did they know they had made a battery!!!...could plated easier, faster better....it was all in front of them wasn't it? Sad, even though they had seen lightning, they had no idea what electricty was. That little parable tells a lot of tales, from the fact that reaching beyond our means to build a starship would be great progress, to the fact that we have yet another president with no gumption. At least not like the kind I headed off to engineering school with all those years ago. If you gotta dream, you gotta purpose, don't let anyone tell you it's impossible, it ain't. I hope they shoulder on with their project, I'll need somewhere to refuel the gallelio......hahahha...
The idea is that going into space is going to demand crews of many rather than a few. I can't imagine future space ventures only available to hands full rather than many. Say crews of 50 rather than 5.