The Starship Enterprise was built in orbit around the planet Earth by a group of scientists and engineers. The ship was designed to be able to travel through space at faster-than-light speeds, which means that it can go faster than 186,000 miles per second (that’s about 300 million kilometers per hour).
The ship is powered by a warp drive system that uses matter-antimatter reactions to produce plasma that propels the ship forward. This allows it to achieve its incredible speeds without ever having to refuel. It’s also equipped with deflector shields that protect it from dangerous radiation and impacts with objects in space.
The exterior of the ship has been carefully designed for maximum efficiency and comfort for its crew members. There are many different levels on board, including a bridge, engineering section, medical bay, cafeteria/galley, sleeping quarters, recreation deck, cargo bays, and an observation lounge overlooking Earth from orbit above its surface.
Building a starship comes with a lot of challenges. Materials needed to build The Starship Enterprise can be very expensive, as you’ll need some of the best materials available at the time. Labor cost is also very high due to the complexity of building such a massive ship. Let’s take a look at all the different aspects that go into building this fictional vessel and how much it would cost today:
The Starship Enterprise
The Starship Enterprise is a fictional spacecraft that appears in the Star Trek media franchise.
The USS Enterprise was introduced in the first aired episode of the original Star Trek series. It is one of several spacecraft used by Starfleet and has been in use by many other races including humans, Klingons, Romulans, and even Borg.
A starship in this case refers to any large spaceship capable of interplanetary travel or interstellar exploration.
Engineering
The engine room is located in the saucer section of the ship and controls its warp drive. It is a large chamber that can be accessed through an airlock on Deck 9.
As such, it’s no surprise that this part of the ship has seen some wear and tear over its 50 years in Starfleet service. In fact, if you want to build your own Enterprise replica and take it for a spin around Earth or any other planet or star system, you would need some serious engineering skills to make sure everything works properly.
The engineering section is also home to the warp core, which is a huge reactor that produces massive amounts of energy for the ship.
Powering the Enterprise
The Enterprise is powered by a warp core, which generates power through nuclear fusion. This provides the ship with enough energy to travel at faster-than-light speeds, allowing it to traverse the galaxy in less than a human lifetime.
The power sources on board are extremely reliable and efficient, but they’re also expensive to build and they’re not easy to repair either. In other words, if you own your own spaceship and want it to be ready when you need it most, then make sure that you have these three things:
- A lot of money for repairs
- A decent backup plan for when there’s no time left for repairs (like having another spaceship nearby)
The Warp Core
The Warp Core is a matter-antimatter reaction chamber used to power the starship. It is the key component of the ship’s propulsion system and generates the energy necessary to power the ship’s systems, including its impulse drive and weapons.
Dimensions
- The length of the starship enterprise varies. The first time we see it in this movie, it is about 4,000 meters (13,100 ft) long. It is later stated to be about 5,000 meters (16,400 ft) long.
- The width of the starship enterprise varies. At one point Captain Kirk says that he is going to “turn her 90 degrees and she will fit between these two buildings like a cork in a bottle”. That would make her only 50 meters wide (164 feet). However later during the battle scene with Khan’s marauders they mention that they are going to get inside the asteroids field where they can easily lose themselves by moving through smaller gaps between them than could be done by other ships which were much bigger than theirs so how wide was their ship then? We don’t know. Maybe 100 meters? Or 500 meters?
- The height of the enterprise varies depending on what section you’re talking about but generally speaking it’s around 300m or 1000ft tall unless you’re looking at something like engineering or sickbay which might be taller because those areas need more floorspace since there’s less room for things like corridors.”
Construction
The amount of materials needed to build the Starship Enterprise is very expensive.
The labor cost to build The Starship Enterprise is very high.
The time it takes to build The Starship Enterprise is very long.
Personnel and Crew Quarters
The crew of the Enterprise numbered about 1,000 with a total of about 800 officers and 200 enlisted personnel. The ship carried approximately 80 standard shuttlecraft, 29 Type-9 shuttlecraft, 12 Type-10 shuttlecraft, and 13 Danube-class runabouts. It also possessed seven starships’ worth of cargo space that could be converted into passenger accommodation if needed (in addition to its utility as an evacuation vehicle). The facilities aboard included several cargo bays large enough for 20 meters (66 feet) long objects; two docking ports; at least one emergency crash hatch; a recreational deck with gymnasium equipment such as handball courts; a holodeck (with programs including tennis); at least one swimming pool and sauna; an arboretum with extinct trees from Earth’s various biomes such as rainforest canopy, prairie grasslands, or desert dunes. There was also at least one armory located on Deck.
Food and High-Energy Neutrino Snacks
The food and snacks for the crew are likely to be fairly high-energy, and thus expensive. Neutrinos, for example, are a type of particle that has such high energy that they can pass through matter with very little interaction (they’re almost like the “ghost particles” in Ghostbusters). Neutrinos don’t interact with ordinary matter at all; only when they hit an atomic nucleus do their energies transfer into other particles (which then go about their business). It’s this lack of interaction between neutrinos and normal matter that makes them useful as a source of power you could eat them. If you had enough neutrinos traveling through your body every second, they’d heat up your organs without actually touching anything else.
This wouldn’t be very tasty or healthy though and if we were concerned about taste and nutrition at all, we might consider another type of food: muons. Muons are created when cosmic rays hit atoms in the upper atmosphere; they can travel right through solid materials like buildings or people without disturbing their structure at all. They’re not bound by any physical laws except gravity (so you couldn’t use one to suspend yourself), but in theory, it would still be possible for someone to eat one safely … as long as there weren’t too many other types around that would mix into something dangerous…
Recreation, Sickbay, and Holodecks
So, what is a holodeck? And how does it work? Well, here’s the short version: A holodeck is a room or area that can replicate any environment and make it look real.
The idea was first explored in Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek series, where crew members could use the technology to play games and even visit places that aren’t really there, like when Captain Picard visited Rekag-Seronia (RIP). It was later expanded upon in Star Trek: The Next Generation where we saw some serious gaming on board the ship (including poker) with actual stakes involved.
And then came Generations with Geordi and his lost love Leah Brahms, and then Voyager with its famous Fair Haven episode…and then Deep Space Nine’s “Our Man Bashir” episodes…and so on.
Building a starship comes with a lot of challenges.
Building a starship comes with a lot of challenges. The ship is massive, and the engineering needed to support life and travel at such high speeds would be difficult.
“To me, the most formidable challenge was how do you get people and supplies up there?” said James Kirkpatrick, former NASA astronaut and current professor at the University of North Dakota’s Aerospace Engineering department. “How do you feed them? How do they breathe? How do they drink? That technology doesn’t exist.”
As a result, the crew’s living conditions would be incredibly cramped and uncomfortable. “You can’t have people just floating around in zero gravity,” said Kirkpatrick. “They’d get sick.”
Materials needed to build The Starship Enterprise
In order to build the Starship Enterprise, you would need a wide variety of materials, including:
- Metals (aluminum, iron/steel, copper)
- Plastics (polypropylene)
- Rubber and other similar compounds (silicone)
- Wood and similar plant-based products (cork)
- Stone and other natural stones (granite)
- Ceramics such as clay or porcelain are fired at high temperatures to create hard ceramic materials
All these materials can be combined together to form complex structures like those found on board starships. But where does all this material come from? The answer is simple: Earth’s crust.
Labor cost
Labor is a major component of any construction project, and the labor cost for building the Starship Enterprise would be no exception. As with other industries, labor costs vary depending on location and skill level. For example, an experienced tradesperson in New York City will cost more than a novice in Oklahoma City. Similarly, if you’re building your dream home on an island off the coast of Florida (no offense), you can expect to pay more for labor than if you were to build it in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square neighborhood.
In addition to location and experience levels, other factors like industry certifications and union membership may also affect labor rates.
In addition to labor costs, consider the cost of materials. For example, the Enterprise was made out of steel instead of aluminum like most modern aircraft are today. Steel is stronger than aluminum but also weighs more, which means that it takes more energy to move and requires more people to build.
Cost to The Starship Enterprise
The cost of building the Starship Enterprise is not a simple question. There are many factors that go into determining the price tag for this iconic science fiction craft. Some things can be calculated fairly precisely, while others require more guesswork.
Here is a breakdown of how much it would cost to build The Starship Enterprise:
- Materials: $6 million in 2008 dollars (or about $13 million today)
- Labor costs: $2 million per year for 10 years (or about $4 million total today)
- Transportation costs: $0 because it was built where it needed to be.
The Starship Enterprise is a complex and impressive feat of engineering, with many different components that need to be considered when calculating the cost. It’s also important to remember that this is just an estimate based on today’s technology. If we ever really build a starship like this, it will likely contain materials and technologies that aren’t available yet.
