How much would it cost to make Star Trek's starship Enterprise

uss enterprise

Trekkie fever never stops. There are Star Trek fans of all ages and in all parts of the world. With the premiere of each new film, with the rerun of any of the seasons on which channel, it still gains many more followers. Very soon, in the month of July, the latest installment for the big screen " Star Trek: Into Darkness ", directed by JJ Abrams, the creator of the "Lost" series , will be released in theaters in our country . To warm up, in Gizmodo they have wondered how much it would cost to build the Enterprise from that movie in the series. It is the so-called new Enterprise or the USS Enterprise of the alternate universe. The flagship of the Starfleet measures a whopping 725.35 meters long and about 190 meters high, with a diameter of 300 meters for the plate.

uss enterprise

The final figure is not at all affordable, but let's see how the estimates have been made . The cost of the George HW Bush , the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the US fleet , has been taken as a basis for the material consignment . Taking into account that the GHWB measures about 333 meters in length by about 76 meters in width, it would take two units (each cost 6.2 billion dollars ). Thus, the amount of the materials would amount to 12,400 million dollars .

uss enterprise

Then you have to add the montage . The 2009 movie "Star Trek" explained that the new Enterprise had been made in Iowa. That involves building the modules on Earth so that they can then be assembled in orbit. Here we have taken the figures from SpaceX, where it is specified that the Falcon Heavy shuttle can transport objects into space at a price of a thousand dollars per pound. As the George HW Bush aircraft carrier weighs about 114,000 tons (two would be 228,000 tons or 502,653 pounds), it is estimated that bringing the modules for the new Enterprise into orbit would cost (labor not included) 456,000 million dollars .

uss enterprise

So far the budget is already 468,400 million dollars , but now we have to equip the ship inside. And the technical team in charge of the project is going to need to feed. Therefore, the next game is the  replicators . As an analogy, the first 3D printers could be used , the MakerBot Replicator 2 (we all know that it is a simulation) that has a unit price of $ 2,200 . It would take about fifty , but in addition we would have to add the costs of raising them into orbit and the price of printing media. That would be a game of $ 307,160 for the replicators .

uss enterprise

With current technology, we could compare the holodeck (holo-section) with a 3D LCD widescreen like the one in the CAVE 2 project , which covers an angle of 320 degrees . The closest thing there could be in stores are Samsung's curved-screen OLED TVs , exhibited at the last CES show . It would take about 72 55-inches at a unit price of about $ 14,000, which would add up to a little over a million dollars. Add to that 36 computers at $ 3,000 a piece, plus motion capture cameras worth $ 10,000, aside from software development and transportation. Thus, for theholodeck would take 6.5 million dollars .

uss enterprise

Next comes the turn of the Enterprise's armament . For photon torpedoes have been based on modern ballistic missiles UGM-133 Trident II. If the USS Voyager , which was a ship specifically designed for science missions, had 38 torpedoes, the new Enterprise may have similar equipment. Each Trident II costs $ 30.9 million and weighs 129,000 pounds. Including the cost of transporting them into space, all of those photon torpedoes would cost $ 6,076.2 million .

But in addition, the crew will need their own hand weapons, the phasers. The new Enterprise is equipped with six banks of phasers. The closest thing is the lasers used by the US Navy: the LaWS system. Thus, the phasers (with the costs of going into orbit included) would cost 171.6 million dollars .

uss enterprise

At the moment, the budget is already for 474,654.6 million dollars, not counting the labor and maintenance of the human team necessary to build the Enterprise . To estimate this concept, we have used the data that NASA and Russia manage on the costs of training an astronaut: 70.7 million dollars. Assuming the crew cadets already know their jobs, that would put costs at $ 777.7 million for a team of eleven people (including transportation). You also have to add the expenses to house them that would be similar to having a soldier in Iraq for a year (between 850,000 and 1,400,000 dollars per person), plus food and beverages, which would be similar to the contracts with NASA from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. Taking all this into account, staff and supply costs are necessary 4,293.1 million .

With all these concepts, the final budget to build a new fully equipped Enterprise would amount to 478,947.7 million dollars . It's an amount equal to 13 percent of the total U.S. budget for 2013 . And, of course, hyperspace speed, we don't even talk.