UnNews:The ambitious plan to build Star Trek's Enterprise
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This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
30 May 2012
BRANDON, Mississippi -- One adventurous electrician makes a compelling case to boldly build what no man has actually built before. But could the thing actually work? If one entrepreneur’s space exploration company SpamX is any indication, the future of space travel is in the hands of people with big imaginations. And nobody's vision is quite as ambitious as one dreamer who has outlined a plan to build Star Trek's USS Enterprise, which he says could be ready to fly within the next 20 years.
“We have the hidden alien and motion picture technology to build Star Trek's Enterprise... so let's do it,” Bernie Tesla -- 53 year old grandson of Nikola Tesla -- writes on his website, spamX.org (which has been loading intermittently because of a dispute over outstanding hosting fees). The website, which features a plastic scale model, does not include conceptual blueprints, a time-line for research and development, nor almost any other conceivable detail, apart from budget proposals, raising the question: Could Tesla actually pull this crazy thing off? Here's what you should know about the genus’s vision:
Who is Bernie Tesla?
He hasn't responded to any media queries, but according to this very news story Tesla adamantly believes his late father, Thomas Tesla, was born from a secret union of Nikola Tesla with Mina Miller-Edison, late wife of inventor Thomas Edison. This irrefutable fact makes Bernie the direct descendant of Tesla, the mad genius who invented electricity and all its applications, including the HAARP atmosphere altering and earthquake machine located in Alaska.
What Bernie fails to mention is that he’s also a failed electrical repairman who has worked for over 33 companies in the past 37 years. Little else is known about him other than his being a Star Trek fan who diligently gleans most of his information from the website, Memory Alpha.
What's his plan?
He wants to build a fully working version of the iconic spacecraft Enterprise by the year 2032. The proposal calls for a “full-sized, ion-powered version of the USS Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board,” says Modern Skeptic Magazine. The “USS Enterprise1,” while not as small as the fictional version envisioned for the Star Trek series, would utilize next-generation technologies already available. The craft could pull triple duty as a spaceship, tourist attraction, and disco, capable of fitting thousands of party-goers on-board and with a sound system that's “quite functional,” writes Tesla.
How would the starship work?
The USS Enterprise1 would run on Ion reactors fueled by Mercury, and keep travelers' feet planted to the ground using a constantly rotating gravity-wheel to generate 1G of gravitational force (Watch a demonstration of the concept). Three additional Lithium batteries would supply auxiliary power for things like lasers and advanced PA, which would enable the craft to be a rocking discotheque. The ship, to be assembled in Mississippi, would stretch 3,150 feet from front to back — that's longer than the width of two Empire State Buildings.
Could it zoom through space at warp drive?
Fortunately, the ship “will cruise the galaxy at ‘hype speed,’ which is faster than warp drive,” speculate Myth Busters, allowing us easy access to “new worlds right in our own solar system,” namely Mars (which the ship would be able to zip to in just 9 minutes thanks to its time-bending concept), Venus, and possibly Jupiter's Ice-covered moon, Europa. Tesla envisions the Enterprise hopping “from planet to planet, dropping off tourists, scientists and curious thrill seekers en masse.”
Who would fund this?
The big if for the plan — with big being a word comprising three letters, viz., ‘b’, ‘i’ and ‘g’ — would be getting the public to provide him with the funding to do a huge 20-year project, says Universe Today, with estimates tallying close to a nillion dollars. But Bernie has already done the math. His budget proposal includes tax exemptions and budget increases to areas such as indiscretionary spending, paying his outstanding web hosting plan, and rent for his one bedroom apartment. These changes would “barely be noticed,” he argues. In fact, according to his plan, a new Enterprise could be developed every 20 years, giving each new generation a tourist attraction of its own.
This sounds dubious, so is it even worth entertaining?
“We need a far grander vision of what we should be doing to get humans to cough up money,” says Tesla. “If we are going to ask the private sector to pay trillions of dollars for a project to put humans into a space disco, it should be for an idea that they can relate to and be inspired by.” But “building directly from science fiction is not necessarily a good idea,” says edge_of_sanity.com. “Well I, for one, think we ought to make it so,” says Tesla. “We should not be done going boldly where no one has gone before.”
Sources[edit | edit source]
- Staff Repeater "The ambitious plan to build Star Trek's USS Enterprise" The Week News, May 30, 2012