Star Trek

Very interesting... there's serious thought around actually building a functional "Gen1" version of the Enterprise - all with technology avaliable today.  "Warp Drive" obviously isn't possible, but the technology available could get us tot he moon within a couple of days and to Mars within 3 months, which is very fast.  There's also though about using the Enterprise to get us to Europa, where its main phaser bank could be used to penetrate the frozen surface for researching the ocean below.

http://www.buildtheenterprise.org

As always, what's need to make this a reality is public exposure, interest, and money.

Jon

http://www.startrek.com/boards-topic/33352433/building-the-gen1-uss-enterprise-really

They have to do it. People were totally excited when the first moon landings were going on. Imagine the public interest that would be generated by the idea of a multi-purpose inter-planetary space cruiser! It should be an international effort, though.

This will hopefully be enough of a push to get scientists and the other thinkers moving on this tech.  Already there's a first generation material that is the closest ever to transparent aluminum.  Here in the US, a company says it will have a first generation tri-corder available within the next couple of years.  A scientist in Japan is working on cold plasma as a possible shield.  I know myself I'm floating around a few ideas of my own.  

They should go ahead and build it.  Maybe everyone who wants to have it built can each donate to the project and have their name put into the logs of the ship.

It would be fantastic for a project like this to take shape especially with the cutback in the USA space program.

Currently only a nuke powered engine would get the Enterprise from Pluto to back within a reasonable amount of time.  It would take a warp engine to go any further and back.  Some scientists now say that a warp engine is possible because you wouldn't violate Einstein's theories, you'd be warping space and going extremely fast.  We need our smartest people to work on crafting the equipment necessary to make a warp engine. 

There are another things needed but I think once the equipment building starts, others will follow and a true Enterprise can be built.

I plan to become a scientist just so I can really work on stuff like this. ^.^

We do need scientists and lots of them.  And people like Steve Jobs who make great things in their garages.  Maybe among all of them, one of them will create the upgrade to a quantum computer.