This is sweet. I wonder if the project would ever get approved



http://www.gizmag.com/engineer-propo...erprise/22532/

 

It will never happen until it can be done privately. And that would look a lot different and be based on making money.



The new proposed NASA budget cuts out the private competition that was the basis for scrapping the Shuttle program in favor of choosing one private company's design and throwing all of the funding behind that system. It's the worst possible outcome short of abandoning manned spaceflight altogether. So yeah, we're going the opposite direction of a trillion dollar interplanetary mothership. But we really could use something like that to boost humanity to the next level, the sooner the better.

 

Pointless until someone comes up with a way to travel faster than light.

 

Which will never happen, I think all scientist agree with this with reference to speed. Though it might be possible to bend time and space and travel a long distance in a shot time once un bent could be measured at faster than the speed of light, but the actual speed will never get that fast nor is there a need to IF one can bend time/space. But yes I agree, pointless until something of that affect is discovered....but I would say pointless even if that feat is achieved.



But this project would be a HUGE waste of money and I am sooooo glad the govt didn't buy (excuse the pun) into this. It is some cockamamy idea from some guy who has watched too much Star Trek. We havn't figured out how to cancel out gravity, our best 'simulation' is centrifigul force, so it would be so much more beneficial for this to be a large cylinder rather than a small flat saucer. It also doesn't adress how to deal with space debree and that that thing will be swiss cheese quite easily. Which is also another problem if we could bend time/space, we would need to have space charted much better, so you don't come out of warp speed/transportation into some other planet we couldn't see or a small meteor uncharted or too close to some star that melts it instantly because of some star.



I don't even know that much about Stephen Hawkins stuff but even I know how far fetched this is and how large of a waste of money this is. And the purpose or goal or reward/benefit would be??? How many people on this earth we live on are starving every night? Lets try to fix our own planet with known oxygen and water before we can even think to attempt to habitate a new planet if over population is an issue. It would be cheaper and more practicle to attempt to build more land/ a new continent in the ocean, but no one made a cool sci-fi show on that, so I guess it is a bad idea? I am not sure I want to spend 1 tril just to fulfill some trekkie's a wet dream.

 

You could say all the same things about colonizing the Americas in the 1500's, being no less accurate.



This thing would be an attraction for people, not directly a profitable venture. It may be successful, at least it would be interesting and able to move from planet to planet within our solar system, which we cannot do currently.



A design optimized to lower cost and maximize usable space would be ideal. Something like this (in principle) should be built though. Even if it looks more like a flying Pringles can. The resources obtainable in space will make it very worthwhile for investors to fund projects making it possible to live and work in space.



The current amount being spent on space exploration and research both at the private and governmental level is just a drop in the bucket.

 

It's probably some 28-year old smart kid behind this. It looks like a some far-fetched dream.

 

Is something I want to hear a private invester saying. A guy with too much money and nothing to invest it, trying to make even more money. That is not something I want to hear the govt say. I don't like this 'drop in the bucket' mentality. 1 Trillion is only a drop in the bucket because we have a massivly oversized bucket. If our bucket was normal sized and we didn't spend/waste so much, 1 trillion would be a small percentage (i.e 3-7%), not a tenth of a percentage aka 'drop'.

 

NASA's 2012 budget is 0.48% of the national budget at $17.8B. The lowest it has ever been. In 1966 it was 4.41%. Considering the potential benefits investing less than half a percent of the Federal budget seems far too small to me. If nothing else, it is worth the investment for inspiration alone. How many children grew up wanting to be astronauts? The US is no longer capable of putting a person in orbit. The space program is also inspirational for people like Stephen Hawking for example, as he has stated himself. People like him lay the groundwork for future breakthrough discoveries, when not making the advancements themselves.



A similar craft, optimized for usable space at 1G, could be built for a lot less than $1T. I don't care one bit that it looks like the Enterprise. Sure, that's cool, but I would prefer usable space to fanciful design. I would guess it could be done for about half that. A slower but better option is to pioneer space based resource gathering and parts production. Go to an asteroid and harvest ore, process it in space, construct in space. It would probably be the same cost as launching everything, but the long term benefits make it the far better option.

 

Speed is defined as distance over time. If you bend space, travel from one spot to another, then unbend space, you have traveled that distance over a short time. I think all scientists would agree that your speed was faster than light. Now velocity... that's another matter.

 

Velocity and speed are the same in this case, velocity is just speed with direction. Drive a straight line and both are the same, but start a turn and your speed stays constant, your forward velocity drops, but you know have a sideways component to the velocity vector. But both dependant on distance and time. But since time and distance in this case was relative, so was the speed or velocity. You said speed is distance over time, but the distance traveled once space is bend is 1" lets say, and time is .1 sec, so that is a very slow speed. Though relative to the rest of the unbent world, your speed was indeed faster than the speed of light, relative to you, you barely moved at all.



But we will never have an object in unbent space go the speed of light, let alone an object we ride in, as to accelerate to those speeds to quickly would kill us, or it would take a year to reach that speed (not too mention infinite energy,or a speed just slow of the speed of light might be possilbe) safely and another year to slow back down safely. So anyone that wanted to go a light year away, would take 1 year to reach the just short of the speed of light, once at that speed be at that speed for on year to travel a light year, then take a yearish to slow down, taking 3ish years to travel 1 light year. Do the math, 1g= 9.8m/s/s, se how long it would take to accelerate to speed of light ~300million m/s (roughly 30612244 secs or .97 years). Though I am not sure, since man can live in 0g for weeks, maybe it is possible to sustain 1.5 or 2g's for extended periods of time, so maybe it could take slightly less time. So again, never going to happen. I doubt bending time and space will either, but that is much more likely than going faster than the speed of light.