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TeMPOraL

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28821.0

The topic ended by:

"Sci fi fans taking on NASA engineers is too funny, but also a waste of time. We deal with real hardware here.

Locked."

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That was an interesting discussion. It's a pity the forum rules are strict there. I'm no spaceflight/physics pro but he did have reasonable arguments.

There was no reasonable arguments made. Simply put, if we wanted to build a space craft of the size or capacity of the enterprise, designing it from the outside in would be a terrible way to do it. The enterprise is a fictional concept produced over a very small amount of time by an artist. That alone means that it is simply unsuitable for the task.

Rather than think of it as somebody trying to bring a sci-fi object to life, why not think of it as someone wanting to make space-flight a reality and realising that a sci-fi object would be a good start?

I posted this article to HN mostly because I wanted to see technical arguments as to why this would not work. This guy's thinking on a scale that is MUCH bigger than the current space technologists. Space flight is difficult and full of challenges but since we have to solve significant problems anyway, why not solve the ones that apply to spacecraft of this scale? (because this sort of ship inherently solves some big issues with humans in space like very little space in the ship, damage to human bodies from low gravity etc)

> I posted this article to HN mostly because I wanted to see technical arguments as to why this would not work.

As I posted above, for Gen1 and Gen3, and possibly even Gen3, I don't think there are any.

The most important good thing these specs do is add in acceleration, even if it's small (0.002g is pretty small). Robert Heinlein said decades ago that the way we do space flight now, with ships "coasting" except for brief rocket burns to change course, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. What we need are the equivalent of sailing ships--ships that always have some "push", even if it's small. The difference in travel times for any significant distance is amazing (note that current plans by NASA for a trip to Mars have it taking two years one way!).

It's an interesting idea to think in this scale, but the proposal of "build the enterprise" is simply flawed. Building complex machines is hard. Why would we waste time trying to apply arbitrary constraints which are based on what an artist 60 years ago thought a spaceship might look like?

As a way of catching the attention of the public and getting some energy behind large scale space exploration, there might be a little merit. Unfortunately the person making the proposal is clinging to the idea that actually building the enterprise is a good idea. It's not. If instead of this they had actually said "Build the enterprise", and on clicking through to the site, the first thing you read was "Not really, but here are all these great reasons for large scale space exploration. Let's get behind this.", then it might have actually gained some traction. As it is, anyone with a grain of knowledge about the complexities of building large scale projects will instantly dismiss this as the scifi fan fantasy that it ultimately is.

It's unfortunate that the guy is apparently an electrical engineer. It gives some credibility to the idea which it doesn't really deserve.

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