How long would a global effort by all of Humanity to build a spaceship like ENTERPRISE take?

If there are any structural engineers out there ,how long if we combined all of earths current inventory of resources worldwide would it take to build a ship the size of Enterprise in space?

Not could we,we know we can,but how fast with global resources that are unlimited?


An orbiting ark that is interstellar ,humanities next step and our insurance of survival as a species should there be a species level event, an Ark located far enough away to make them safe from any local disaster,but close enough to be in contact.

if we say Ark lets say it must hold one million humans and their required resources and manufacturing capabilities.And be permanently self sufficient.It must hold the technology and resources to return to earth or planets with gravity like earths to retrieve resources and to ship them up to the station,lets call it the Intrepid Voyager.IV for short.



[edit on 3-4-2010 by one4all]

It's currently impossible.
We would need dozens of new technologies, so until those are developed, it would be impossible to get to other star systems, for example, we're going to need to develop some sort of shielding for cosmic dust and particles that would otherwise rip through the ship, and that's just cosmic dust, but if you just want a ship that is very large that would orbit around the earth, it would be relatively cheap, probably in the range of a few billion or so I think, alot less than banker bailouts anyway

[edit on 3-4-2010 by hippomchippo]

The propulsion for the ship would be an engine that uses anti-matter and with current technology it will take about a 1000 years to produce 1oz of anti-matter. So I dont see it happening anytime soon unless we make some significant breakthroughs soon but then again with the speed our science is advancing you can't just know.

Look back a 100 years, heck even 50 years and see how much has changed. I wonder what the next 50 years will bring.

Originally posted by Phlegmi
The propulsion for the ship would be an engine that uses anti-matter and with current technology it will take about a 1000 years to produce 1oz of anti-matter. So I dont see it happening anytime soon unless we make some significant breakthroughs soon but then again with the speed our science is advancing you can't just know.

Look back a 100 years, heck even 50 years and see how much has changed. I wonder what the next 50 years will bring.

It costs 62.5 trillion dollars for 1 gram of antihydrogen, it's amazing how much these damn things cost.

If we had all the right technology I would estimate about 10 to 15 years to build a space dock and about 5 to 10 years to build a star-ship.

Number one, engage!


[edit on 3-4-2010 by Grey Magic]

reply to post by one4all


I would say it is possible, but the expense would be astronomical to say the least. TPTB have anti-gravity technology, plus "bubble" technology, and artificial reality technology.(necessary to keep the inhabitant's sanity intact) Now the problem is enough high grade metals, such as Titanium, and then the big part, a space based work station would have to be built first, for a Star-Cruiser such as the Enterprise could never be assembled on the surface, it would have to be assembled in space. Other than those problems, it could happen.

The ENTERPRISE is so last century... we should build DESTINY (from Stargate Universe).

Within the current state of technology, there are a couple alternatives to the phillosopher's stones of space-travel (such as antimatter engines, warp-drives, etc..)
A ship could be equiped, for example, with a combined set of engines, nuclear and ionic (the first to lift-off and main propulsion and the latter for long-term navigation steering)
There are great promises in the field of bio-technology, with many interesting projections for space travel. In maybe 20-30 years we should be capable of designing plants suited for space, even radiation-eating bacteriae could be "adjusted" to form a special layer of protection from space-hazards.

The advances in AI are promising too (even though we never seem to escape from the ghost in the machine fear).
And that is just today's projections...

Who realy knows! the dream of me having command of my own starship is quickly slipping away.

I often wonder how many of the worlds problems could be solved from space.
e.i.....unemployment .How many people would it take to build a fleet of ships to explore the universe.We have those pesky asteroids as bricks a solar system full of resources.

if the effort was combined, such as all the worlds greatest minds,bit of British innovation,tad of American can doo attitude ,some Chinese labour ,a promt serving of German efficiency and lil bit of French or Italian flare.

If the whole world would use all the money used on war and anything related to it , ammo , weapons and so forth and take all scientists specialized on the matter under a common goal , we would probably have it very very soon , sooner than anyone would expect. However that will never happen.

reply to post by drakus


I'm not so sure about AI... i saw another Film on it yesterday 'Surrogates' ... i predict AI will be pretty scary... i'm not too sure i want a world where AI is everywhere... it's already too crowded in some parts of the World without creating AI to go with it...

Originally posted by TruthxIsxInxThexMist
reply to post by drakus

 

I'm not so sure about AI... i saw another Film on it yesterday 'Surrogates' ... i predict AI will be pretty scary... i'm not too sure i want a world where AI is everywhere... it's already too crowded in some parts of the World without creating AI to go with it...

But think of the possibilites of it, we could have robots that could become more and more intelligent, leading to the creation of more and more intelligent robots, until the point where we have a robot that is magnitudes smarter than man, that will revolutionize nearly every aspect of our life, or realize it's independance and destroy us all.
It's really an all or nothing venture.

reply to post by hippomchippo


Yes... worth looking to the Future with optimism that one day we could create a Robot which kills us all... 'Terminator' anyone?

Originally posted by TruthxIsxInxThexMist
reply to post by hippomchippo

 

Yes... worth looking to the Future with optimism that one day we could create a Robot which kills us all... 'Terminator' anyone?

It's either a golden age or a dark age, but I think us as humans, will be able to overcome this, and perhaps live with intelligent robots peacefully, that is why I think we should go full force into A.I with ethical treatment to robots with intelligence.

The Brits are currently working on some pretty cool ideas for actual force field-type shields for their tanks which would replace the need for heavy armor. The idea is to send out a huge pulse of energy milliseconds before a shell hits to destroy it before it strikes. This sort of thing has actually been built and tested going back decades, but the size of the devices have been prohibitive for putting in vehicles. But now they are apparently getting better at making these devices much smaller and soon might be able to fit them on tank-sized vehicles.

It might be possible to adapt this sort of technology for vehicles in space to help shield them from interstellar dust and debris.

As for technologies for light-speed or warp travel, that is the kind of thing we probably won't be able to do for a thousand years, if ever. We're only just now at the conceptual stage where our brightest theorists are thinking about how it might be possible, but these ideas are so close the edge of our understanding that they are predicated on concepts that are still highly theoretical and not yet proven.

Energy is the other problem - the amount of energy needed to achieve this kind of travel is the equivalent to that entire energy output of a star, so unless there's some sort of workaround that requires much less energy or we find a way to generate that kind of power, it's going to be very hard to do those things.

You answered your own question. It will never happen because we cannot for all we're worth come together in a global effort to do anything at all. We are simply incapable of extending our efforts beyond our own immediate self-interest. We won't be escaping Earth's cradle for a long time yet, though we may destroy ourselves in the meantime.

Boy, are YOU going to be pissed off when you find out we already had interstellar flight in the 1980's. But you'll be something like 75 by then so you won't care much anymore.

Of course, the biggest one's not nearly so large as even Enterprise NX-01. But you gotta start somewhere.

/where did you think the money for the $600 toilet seats was going? Mach drives aren't cheap.

Originally posted by Bedlam
Boy, are YOU going to be pissed off when you find out we already had interstellar flight in the 1980's. But you'll be something like 75 by then so you won't care much anymore.

Of course, the biggest one's not nearly so large as even Enterprise NX-01. But you gotta start somewhere.

/where did you think the money for the $600 toilet seats was going? Mach drives aren't cheap.

Until you can prove it, it's simply speculation and not fact, so please don't act like it is.

Originally posted by hippomchippo
Until you can prove it, it's simply speculation and not fact, so please don't act like it is.

You'll see. If you live long enough.

The little insystem triangles have von Neumann-Einstein drives, the bigger ones with interstellar capability use Mach drives.

vE drives could go superluminal if they could fix the godawful control instability problems. Not that they're likely to. But it would be less expensive than a Mach drive, which is a big Swiss watch sort of thing in terms of complexity. Horribly expensive.

Originally posted by Bedlam

Originally posted by hippomchippo
Until you can prove it, it's simply speculation and not fact, so please don't act like it is.

You'll see. If you live long enough.

The little insystem triangles have von Neumann-Einstein drives, the bigger ones with interstellar capability use Mach drives.

vE drives could go superluminal if they could fix the godawful control instability problems. Not that they're likely to. But it would be less expensive than a Mach drive, which is a big Swiss watch sort of thing in terms of complexity. Horribly expensive.

Ok, I'll bite.
Where'd you get this info from?
Are you a secret CIA spy who went rogue and now wants to free the world from their evil secrets?
Or did you get it from someone who claimed to be former CIA?