By Rudie Obias | 8 years ago

How close are we to boldly going where no man has gone before? Apparently, within the next 20 years, we could be traveling from Class M planet to Class M planet. Engineers have started an online White House petition to start a feasibility study to build an ion-powered version of a Constitution-Class Enterprise from the science fiction series Star Trek. As of this writing, they only need 23,298 signatures by January 21, 2013 to have it placed into consideration by the Obama Administration. Read the petition below.

We have within our technological reach the ability to build the 1st generation of the USS Enterprise. It ends up that this ship’s inspiring form is quite functional. This will be Earth’s first gigawatt-class interplanetary spaceship with artificial gravity. The ship can serve as a spaceship, space station, and space port all in one. In total, one thousand crew members & visitors can be on board at once. Few things could collectively inspire people on Earth more than seeing the Enterprise being built in space. And the ship could go on amazing missions, like taking the first humans to Mars while taking along a large load of base-building equipment for constructing the first permanent base there.

An engineer at BuildTheEnterprise.org created the online White House petition. He believes it is possible to build a full-scale Starship Enterprise with current technology within 20 years of the start of the project. The anonymous engineer hopes to gain the attention of other engineers and scientists to move the concept forward.

If he plans to build an actual Constitution-Class Starship, then BTE believe its construction would all take place in outer space and have a rotating gravity section inside. The website features extensive and detailed conceptual designs, Starship specifications, and a funding schedule. Below is a video highlighting what the Starship will look like and how it will move.

Earlier this year, there was an online White House petition to build a Death Star space station from Star Wars by 2016. The petition has secured the needed 25,000 signatures (it received over 32,000 signatures) to be considered by the Obama Administration for construction. There has been no word about whether or not it will be built and fully operational by the time the Rebel Alliance tries to blow it up.

[It’s also worth noting that many of these far-fetched White House petitions have been getting headlines in the wake of the post-election “let us secede” petitions. And obviously, having the White House “consider” such a proposal, let’s face it, doesn’t really mean anything. – Ed.]