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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> You need a ship that can safely and reliably take people to Earth orbit and back at a price normal people can afford.

That's what needs to be actually built, but it's not how human imagination works. To capture imagination, you make people watch this:

http://youtu.be/_yijcWsLda8?hd=1&t=9s

or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DEw70LVWs

You need to touch the heart, connect with people's desires, emotions and dreams they already have. And be it or not, Star Trek, et al. is something that is closer to general audience than another rocket. I'm not saying "let's build the Enterprise", but we shouldn't ignore the popular culture vision of space, because it's mostly Hollywood, not NASA, who drive the dreams. Let's find a way to connect to that.

BTW., to remind everyone, the very first Space Shuttle was named "Enterprise" for a reason.

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What captures peoples' imaginations isn't the vehicle. It is the journey. Or, more importantly, the destination. The vehicle is just the can they sit in to get there.

People (the vast majority, anyway) don't travel because they like to travel. They travel because they want to get somewhere. What excites their imagination is the thought of being at that place, not how they got there.

Part of the reason people aren't excited about space travel today is because there's nowhere to go. There's no orbiting low-gravity resort to vacation on, no Mars colony where Cousin Phil lives with his family to go to for Thanksgiving. And a big part of why those things don't exist is because getting people into space is a damn expensive and risky business, even today. If the only way to get to Disneyworld was to spend $20,000,000 and ride a thirty-year-old Russian relic, Disneyworld wouldn't exist either.

A cheap, safe and ugly ship would do a lot more to solve that problem than an expensive and beautiful one would.

You havw to remember that in the imagination, the vehicle is a large part of the journey. Having a nice one definitely helps, or car styling wouldn't matter so much. Beautiful vehicles will definitely help.

So you're left with the question of which helps more: a beautiful/sexy vehicle, or safety and cheapness, the answer is basically one of detailed analysis. I suspect you're right about where the balance leans, but I also suspect it's possible to have both.

I agree, what we really need is to equip a Mars rover with a digital IMAX3D camera.

I personally didn't like the intros of Enterprise.

Partially because its tone didn't feel like a Star Trek intro, but mainly because it completely ignored the incredible achievements of the Soviet space program. You would at least expect a shot of Yuri Gagarin.

> Partially because its tone didn't feel like a Star Trek intro

I felt something quite the opposite; I think that Enterprise intro actually best captured the spirit of whole Star Trek - the dream of exploration, advancement and excellence.

Fair point about the Russians though; they deserve more credit that they usually get nowdays.

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