Updated: NASA Shows Off Gorgeous Concept for a Real-Life Enterprise

[Coruptin]

You guys who are going full on hate boner for the military, I hate bloated spending as much as the next guy, but the sad fact is that at the moment pretty much the only thing the USA has going for it that secures its place as a major world power is its freakishly huge military and freakishly huge private companies, and only one of these are beholden to the government.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Warp drive vessel design: Check!

Remotely feasible warp drive design: ...

Even theoretically possible warp drive design that doesn't require not only new technology, but new physics: ...

About sixty years ago, some very smart people thought that it would never be feasible to build computers smaller than an a house.

Certainly, but I don't think that's the objection.

It's perfectly reasonable to say "things might be different in the future". Concept art for something designed based on one way that things might be different in the future isn't something I'd get too excited about, however.

 

[Exterminas]

Warp drive vessel design: Check!

Remotely feasible warp drive design: ...

Even theoretically possible warp drive design that doesn't require not only new technology, but new physics: ...

About sixty years ago, some very smart people thought that it would never be feasible to build computers smaller than an a house.

Certainly, but I don't think that's the objection.

It's perfectly reasonable to say "things might be different in the future". Concept art for something designed based on one way that things might be different in the future isn't something I'd get too excited about, however.

The way I see it, every way to make people interested in theoretical research is valid. Because getting people interested in your research is the way to get money. No money, no research. And in the field of space travel in particular, this is becomming a problem. Ever since the end of the cold war, people have been less interested in space.

Instead, money is being spent on killing people or on researching ways to build even smaller iphones. I personally think that is a bad thing.

Sure, that spacecraft will never exist in that form. But a smiliar one might, given enough interest = money. Of course these things are never going to happen, if you don't spend any cash on the research. But that is just how science works these days.

 

[Drakoorr]

This needs to be a thing. Before I die. Please.

Also, IXS?! That's only one S off from ISS, or.. the Terran Empire! That does not inspire confidence..

X is used for eXperimental, so I would guess it stands for International eXperimental Ship Enterprise.

Really? I'd have gone with eXploration. Also, while we're building stellar propulsion methods out of sci-fi, anyone want to get to work on an Infinite Improbability Drive? I hear those hardly ever destroy all life on the planet you meant to visit.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The way I see it, every way to make people interested in theoretical research is valid. Because getting people interested in your research is the way to get money. No money, no research. And in the field of space travel in particular, this is becomming a problem. Ever since the end of the cold war, people have been less interested in space.

Instead, money is being spent on killing people or on researching ways to build even smaller iphones. I personally think that is a bad thing.

Sure, that spacecraft will never exist in that form. But a smiliar one might, given enough interest = money. Of course these things are never going to happen, if you don't spend any cash on the research. But that is just how science works these days.

Hmmm, that's fair enough.

Though, I don't see a problem with making smaller iphones. There's no way of telling what research will lead to, have to go muck about with everything and hope for the best. Lots of stuff was discovered by accident, after all.

OTOH, I wish NASA was doing more cool stuff, instead of just talking about doing it. I have a vague recollection of a satellite covered in mirrors so it was easy to spot from the Earth, and the mirrors were polished by schoolkids. Getting the next generation involved, and all.

 

[CloudAtlas]

And depending on what kind of science fiction you happen to subscribe there are other possible reasons too: Mankind might have to leave Earth behind one day - or sexy blue aliens will make them want to.

You make a convincing argument.

Or , and here me out here. We spend the space money and turn earth into *THE* Intergalactic Spring Break destination. We get the blue space ladies and while they're enjoying the tequillas we just happen to take a very close look at the space ships While we offer vallet parking.

That would certainly preferable. Alas, it might be upon us to seek them out. Sadly, and I guess that is a point where you and I can agree, it idoes not seem very likely that either of us will live to see the day it happens one way or the other.

 

[CloudAtlas]

we dump 19billion into bioengineering research and we just might be able to live that long. Granted we may need cybernetic replacements.

And possibly pills matching the objects of our desire in colour if we want to be able to truly enjoy the fruits of our endeavour.

Failing that, I will simply feast on the bloody of virgins every full moon. COurse... finding virgins in this day and age is no easy task.

You just need to belong to the right religion. Although admittedly it will already be too late for you once gain access to them.

 

[Strazdas]

Once you've got a surplus of materials and energy, sure, aesthetics are a consideration. But the first human-constructed dwellings were round huts and tents rather than the box-like structures that are common today. Because that was the most efficient use of the materials at the time. You got the greatest interior area for the least material circumference. Today, it doesn't matter so much, so nice right angles are the norm because they are more appealing.

well, actually, boxes are easier to construct due to materials used nowadays, so housing may have been a bad example, but i get your point. thing is, by the time we sucesfully make aulberrie (sp?) drive work, considering the energy needs for such drive, we very likely will have surplus of those materials, well that or its going to be our "last, best hope".

For those not in the know, the Orion drive is a drive where you eject nuclear weapons behind the ship and detonate them, catching the emitted energy in the back of your ship and propelling you forwards, releasing the weapons faster and faster to accelerate towards the speed of light in a vacuum.

erm, i see a problem. how do you decelerate? nuking the space in front of you? that would be kinda like flying at high speed straight into the explosion, youd need one hell of a ship to run this. also what about maneuvering? how many nuclear launchers it should have? 8?

which also happens to be the inspiration for the Earth Alliance ships in Babylon 5.

ah, babylon 5, the best sci-fi out there

i love how they solved artificially gravity and does not even mention it.

You can tell the number of hippies on this forum, by how often the idea of 'take money from the millitary comes up. Seriously. Do you know any country that has done that? It's been done mind you, several times in fact. Those countries aren't around any more... their lands and resources now belong to other countries who didn't cut their military budget.

erm, hello. my country cut military expense. we are still around. so yeah, thats grade A bullshit.
also do note that US military budget is larger than all other NATO forces budgest COMBINED. cutting it will not stop your military. not to mention that your military already has probbly worst cost/usefulness ratio due to funneling a lot into expensive programs that end up in deadends. Meanwhile you still cant afford the medicine for wounded weterans because reasons.

Also many seem to forget the one interesting thing they're saying. They don't care if humans reach space they want AMERICA to reach space and get out there. COme on you think NASA is the ONLY space agency in the world. It may *currently* be one of the best buuut the others have been catching up quickly. So shutting down NASA wouldn't hurt things much, and shunting it to education would only ensure that this other international agencies will be hiring your freshly trained scientists.

Oh, yeah, shutting down the best wont hurt things much. lets shut down Sony. it certainly wont hurt the console market, after all others exist!

Of course this brings up the whole issue of getting into space. We we're like 3 year olds with rifles. Capable of figuring out how stuff works and using the tool but no where near mature enough to know when we shouldn't. We have other problems that need to be fixed before space. Otherwise we'd just be taking all our petty fights, divisions, bigotries, and insecurities and taking them to orbital missile platforms/space stations.

maybe the african tribes sohuld have tried their own issues before going into europe. maybe columbus should try to sovle his own issues before finding america. well you get the point.

Space is not going anywhere...we have time, and fixing the social problems of the world only gives us *more* time.

space isnt going anywhere, but time we do not have. we are poluting to the point of treatening extinction, we are running out of resources on this rock. we have less time than you think.
as far as solving other issues go, we can do both at once.

So please do expound upon the vast gains we made from that lunar landing.

here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

wrong fiction. go watch Event Horizon [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/reference]

Or , and here me out here. We spend the space money and turn earth into *THE* Intergalactic Spring Break destination. We get the blue space ladies and while they're enjoying the tequillas we just happen to take a very close look at the space ships While we offer vallet parking.

so subscribe our lives to whims of aline resort visitors and their vacation trends? see how well that worked out for greece.

the best way to get into space is to monetise it.

infinite space = infinite resources.

the only thing "government" need to do is lead the technological way to a certain extent and "govern" it (ie issues and set in place a legal framework whereby "claims" are issued & upheld and an economic framework under which business can operate)

in the end people will go to Mars to become "The Martians" because...well how much is a planet worth[footnote]atm ours is about 40ish trillion[/footnote] ?...

space monetizes itself. first person to mine asteroids will be the riches man on earth. there already is massive monetary gains in space mining, its just that most investors dont seem to want to make long term investors and rather invest into short term stars like selling justin biebers albums.

Though, I don't see a problem with making smaller iphones. There's no way of telling what research will lead to, have to go muck about with everything and hope for the best. Lots of stuff was discovered by accident, after all.

indeed. not exactly iphones but the CPU/GPU market has been struggling with lowering DYE size because physics start to no longer work the way we want thme to work when you go that small, which lead to invention of Grafite and experiments in using them in processors, which may wery well revolutionize the market if successful.

 

[BodomBeachChild]

Sweet a real life Stratios! https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Stratios

 

[vallorn]

This update is just more proof that Kerbal Space Program can be used for anything from Scott Manley's insane "fly round the solar system on 10 grams of fuel" techniques to HOCgaming driving a rover to Kerbin's north pole for charity... to Danny2462 unleashing the kraken and making things levitate for no reason...

Yes I plugged 3 KSP youtubers there sorry I like giving credit where credit is due in my examples. Still this is really nifty that someone could actually model this. I just wonder how it flies...

 

[elvor0]

You can tell the number of hippies on this forum, by how often the idea of 'take money from the millitary comes up. Seriously. Do you know any country that has done that? It's been done mind you, several times in fact. Those countries aren't around any more... their lands and resources now belong to other countries who didn't cut their military budget. So to all those who reflexively through up that suggestion... pick which foreign language you want to learn because I can promise you won't be speaking english for very long. Chinese maybe, or French.

That's true. If you live in a bannana republic, or a right wing fan fic novel, where those damn hippies get killed by the commies. But not in a stable 1st world country.

A small chunk cut out of the US military budget is not going to lead to a military coup or China invading. The US military budget accounts for 40% of the GLOBAL arms spending, and in 2012, was 7 times larget than Chinas military spending. In 2008 they spent 683 billion on the military budget. Six Hundred and Eighty Three Billion.

In 2012, the US had $682 Billion spent, four times more than the 2nd on the list; China, at $166 billion.
http://www.thelocal.se/20130415/47334

Diverting some of that is not going to cause a fucking coup or world war 3. That's an insane amount of money, they could slash their budget in half and still be spending more than anyone else, without cutting it, they're still spending more than everyone else in the top combined. Nevermind the fact that they have access to cutting edge technology.

WORLD'S BIGGEST DEFENCE BUDGETS

US - $682bn
China - $166bn
Russia - $90bn
UK - $60bn
Japan - $59bn
France - $58bn
Saudi Arabia - $56bn
India - $46bn
Germany - $45bn
Source: SIPRI


Sweden Cut their military budget 3 years ago and they're doing fine. In fact they're the 4th happiest country in the world.
http://www.thelocal.se/20090127/17172

And it's not like the US havent attempted to cut their budget, because it's just not necessary anymore.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/24/us-usa-defense-budget-idUSBREA1N1IO20140224

Granted it hasn't gone through yet and people are arguing about it but still, military spending dropped in 2012 by 6%.

Britain cut it's military budget by $17 Billion dollars in 2011, (we only spend $60 Billion a year on ours, so that's a massive chunk) are there people rioting in the streets, did the military generals stage a coup? Of course they fucking didn't, because I don't live in Tropico.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140612/DEFREG01/306120039/Final-UK-Military-Cuts-Announced-Meet-2018-Goals

Do you really think funnelling a few tens of billions from the military into better education or NASA is going to do that much damage to the US military?

Lastly, the French? You really think the French are going to invade...anyone? I'm English and even I don't think the French are going to attack us anymore.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's no secret that NASA has been working on a warp drive [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119649-Warp-Drive-Might-Actually-Be-Possible]for many years now[/a]. The current theory involves bending space in a way that doesn't actually move the ship so much as all of time and space around it. According to researcher Dr. Harold White, this works by exploiting a possible loophole in the universe. While no objects break the speed of light, the universe around the ship is expanding and contracting at ridiculous speeds. Pulling that off requires astounding amounts of energy, but White and his team think they've found a way to do it more efficiently.

At least it isn't powered by Magic Worm Shit.

 

[Smiley Face]

You can tell the number of hippies on this forum, by how often the idea of 'take money from the millitary comes up. Seriously. Do you know any country that has done that? It's been done mind you, several times in fact. Those countries aren't around any more... their lands and resources now belong to other countries who didn't cut their military budget. So to all those who reflexively through up that suggestion... pick which foreign language you want to learn because I can promise you won't be speaking english for very long. Chinese maybe, or French.

Oh, come on! Countries cut the military's budget all the time. The budget of the United States military isn't the same every damn year, it fluctuates, and not just on a straight upward spiral; it goes up, it goes down, and I haven't seen any military coup. Since the Cold War ended, I'm pretty sure almost all European NATO signatories reduced their militaries, because it wasn't necessary or efficient for them to be maintained for a threat that was no longer there. The democracies of Europe didn't suddenly collapse. And neither did the US - a few years after it was clear everything was going to hell, the US cut not just its military budget, but its personnel, in force reduction. No coup.

Moreover, there's a difference between what you're talking about, a well-funded military, and what the United States has, which is an over-funded military. Military Planes are literally ordered to be built by Congress, and then immediately moved to scrapyards, on account of the fact that they were obsolete before the construction was ordered. In the last national election, Mitt Romney caused some stir because part of his campaign was to give a significant increase to the military budget, despite the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressly saying 'No, we don't need this money, put it somewhere else'. The United States Military outspends the next 15 highest military budgets COMBINED, and it would rise if there were any sort of invasion like you're hypothesizing, to accommodate all the volunteers. It is beyond excessive, and it's also detrimental to your long-term security, if those costs come at the expense of the education and infrastructure that will continue to grow your economy and allow you to maintain a superior military force 30-50 years down the line.

Militaries don't usually immediately declare a coup when there's a major cut, if there's a reason for that cut - coups are more likely, though still by no means certain, when militaries lose power or security in a significant way. Cutting excesses in the military reduces neither of those, and would probably reduce the budget more than enough to help address education and infrastructure (although previous posters are correct in that the US education system isn't broken just because it's underfunded, but because it's been created by grandstanding politicians who do what sounds good rather than what works well). Even if it didn't, the brunt

Now, cutting it 90%, like some folks are suggesting? That would not go over well. It probably wouldn't lead to a coup, per se, because a coup is when the military is primarily leading the charge - cut the US military budget by half that, and the majority of the country would be up in arms about it. But even a... 5, maybe 8% reduction, reducing the inefficiencies in spending, would open up things for, if nothing else, reducing the national debt. Maybe more, so the US only outspends the next... 10 countries combined.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Yep, these guys know what's up. We are guaranteed to put advertising boards on our space faring ships.


Also, heh windows. I guess it would look strange without them.

 

[NoeL]

The current theory involves bending space in a way that doesn't actually move the ship so much as all of time and space around it.

That's... exactly how the Spaceship in Futurama works.

Exactly how it works, and that's quite scary.

Not exactly - at least how I understand it. The Futurama ship displaces spacetime whereas a warp drive deforms it. Here are some diagrams I made in Photoshop because I wanted to procrastinate:

Hence the term "warp".