Foo Fighters - Next Year

Neil Armstrong, The First Man on the Moon, Dies at Age 82

From the NY Times:

Neil Armstrong, who made the “giant leap for mankind” as the first human to set foot on the moon, died on Saturday. He was 82.

His family said in a statement that the cause was “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” He had undergone heart bypass surgery this month in Cincinnati, near where he lived. His recovery had been going well, according to those who spoke with him after the surgery, and his death came as a surprise to many close to him, including his fellow Apollo astronauts. The family did not say where he died.

A quiet, private man, at heart an engineer and crack test pilot, Mr. Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, as the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the mission that culminated the Soviet-American space race in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy had committed the nation “to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” It was done with more than five months to spare.

My favorite part of the article is this:

"After news of Mr. Armstrong’s death was reported, President Obama, in a statement from the White House, said, “Neil was among the greatest of American heroes.”

“And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time,” the president added, “he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”

Read the rest of the article here:

RIP Neil Armstrong - The NY Times

From Yahoo News:

"A lot of people couldn't figure out Armstrong."

With those words Tom Wolfe introduced Neil Armstrong, the astronaut hero of his nonfiction masterpiece,

"The Right Stuff." Armstrong, of course, was a masterpiece himself: the commander of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and the first man ever to walk on the moon. Armstrong died Saturday from complications relating to heart surgery. He was 82.

All these decades, Armstrong, the lunar Adam, has represented a code his admirers knew better than to try to crack. Not that, early on, great literary minds—besotted by the baby-faced genius—didn't try.

Wolfe continued: "You'd ask him a question, and he would just stare at you with those pale-blue eyes of his, and you'd start to ask the question again, figuring he hadn't understood, and— click —out of his mouth would come forth a sequence of long, quiet, perfectly formed, precisely thought-out sentences."

So Wolfe warned against understanding Armstrong in "The Right Stuff." And that warning was more or less heeded, somewhat miraculously, until Armstrong's dying day. Profilers kept their mitts off him. Hollywood starlets didn't swoop in to wreck his family. And, most mercifully of all, Carson and Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore and Ali G and Oprah didn't demand that he couch-surf with them."

Read the rest of the story here:

Neil Armstrong Moon Mystery Man

Note: Neil Armstrong is a true American hero, icon and legend.

Godspeed, Neil.

RIP.

Also, I dedicate this video and song to him from the Foo Fighters,
"Next Year":

Foo Fighters - Next Year - Youtube

Best Of UFO Sightings Of June 2012, AFO

Boy Creates 'Bucket List' for His Dying Service Dog - Yahoo News

“Eleven-year-old Cole Hein has a very special relationship with his Jack Russell terrier: Bingo is his service dog. Cole has a potentially lethal form of apnea, a medical condition that causes him to sometimes stop breathing. Bingo, trained by Canada’s National Service Dogs organization and the MSAR Search and Rescue Association, is certified as a hearing, medical service, and therapy dog. He’s trained to alert people if Cole needs CPR.

“In the first 6 months, she saved Cole’s life three times,” wrote Cole’s mom Mandi Hein. “A constant companion, Bingo has given Cole freedom and safety, devotion, and friendship.”

Bingo was honored for saving Cole numerous times by being inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame in 2010, reports the Winnipeg Free Press.

And now, Bingo is dying. And he has a Bucket List. Or as Cole calls it, a “Lick-It List.”

After being told that Bingo only has weeks to live after being diagnosed with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome, Cole created a list of things he wants to do with his dog before Bingo passes away:

1) Let Bingo “taste” the world by getting him dog treats from around the globe.

2) Take Bingo for one last “public” outing to Ruckers (a game-and-pizza place).

3) To walk around the block twice with Bingo. (Cole later decided that doing one block one day, and a second block the next day was easier for Bingo.)

4) A photo shoot with just Bingo and Cole, which has already been arranged.

Cole and Mandi have set up a Facebook page to encourage people to send dog treats as a reward for Bingo’s many years of service. Mandi emphasizes that they do not need financial donations; pet insurance is covering Bingo’s medical bills. Mandi also notes, “Your dog treat donations will be put to excellent, dog-drooling use. What Bingo doesn’t get around to eating will be donated to a local shelter.”

Before Bingo joined their family, Mandi says, they had to have 24/7 nurses and healthcare staff, because Cole need constant supervision. Bingo, trained to recognize the specific gagging sound Cole made when he stopped breathing, would bark to alert her if Cole needed help. She’s grateful that Bingo allowed her to raise her three children safely, especially when her husband deployed to Afghanistan.”

Read more of the article, including comments, here:

http://shine.yahoo.com/pets/boy-creates-bucket-list-dying-dog-171200146.html

A sad but touching story.

I hope the best for the both of them.

Rare Spider Discovery

Interesting find!

"A group of cave explorers and scientists have made a rare discovery: an entirely new taxonomic family of spider in the caves of southern Oregon.

Only two other spider families (the taxonomic group above both genus and

species) have been found since 1990, and this is the first newly discovered, native one uncovered in North America since 1890, said California Academy of Sciences researcher Charles Griswold, lead author of the study that described the species.

So far, the family consists only of the one species described, which the researchers named Trogloraptor marchingtoni. The species is named after Neil Marchington, a member of the Western Cave Conservancy, who first discovered the spider. The genus name, Trogloraptor, means "cave robber."

It's an apt name for a spider with unique hooks, or claws, on its legs, which the researchers believe are used to snatch flying insects, like midges, out of the air. With its legs outstretched, the spider measures up to 3 inches (8 centimeters) long.

"They're biggish," Griswold said. "But when you're in a cave and it's dark and there's only the beam of your head lamp, they look much bigger. It's quite astonishing to see them hanging from a few threads."

Read more:

http://news.yahoo.com/rare-discovery-hook-legged-spider-found-oregon-cave

On a side note, it looks like a friggin' facehugger from the movies Alien/Aliens! -Rob

Who? Who? Two New Owl Species Discovered

"Two new owl species have been identified in the Philippines, and researchers say the birds' songs led them to the discovery.

"More than 15 years ago, we realized that new subspecies of Ninox hawk-

owls existed in the Philippines," zoologist Pam Rasmussen, of Michigan State University (MSU), said in a statement. "But it wasn't until last year that we obtained enough recordings that we could confirm that they were not just subspecies, but two new species of owls."

In fact, the researchers found that the Philippine hawk-owl (Ninox philippensis) consists of seven allopatric species, or those that emerge as a consequence of individuals being isolated geographically, or temporally. They also identified one subspecies.

Two of the species had never been described nor officially named, until now. One of the newly identified owl species, now called the Camiguin hawk-owl, lives only on the small island of Camiguin Sur and has a very different voice and set of physical features than other owls in the region, the researchers said. It has blue-gray eyes and sings a long solo song at night that builds in intensity with a low growling tone. Pairs of Camiguin hawk-owls, meanwhile, sing short barking duets that kick off with a growl."

Read more at:

http://news.yahoo.com/two-owl-species-discovered

From Yahoo News and Space.com - CIA Declassifies Amazing 1972 Spy Satellite Capsule Deep-Sea Rescue, Finally!

From Yahoo News and SPACE.com:

"It's a plot worthy of a Hollywood action movie: 40 years ago, the U.S. Navy carried out a daring mission to retrieve a top-secret film capsule that had settled more than 16,000 feet (4,876 meters) underwater on the ocean floor. At the time, the expedition was the deepest undersea salvage operation ever attempted.

Documents released publicly by the Central Intelligence Agency on Aug. 8 detail the capsule's incredible recovery, using what was at the time the Navy's most sophisticated deep-sea submersible.

On July 10, 1971, a classified U.S. satellite, code-named Hexagon, attempted to return a mysterious "data package" to Earth by ejecting a capsule over the Pacific Ocean. The capsule's parachute failed, and the canister slammed into the water with an excruciating 2,600 Gs of force.

Hexagon satellites, which were declassified in 2011, were photoreconnaissance spacecraft that were part of an American Cold War-era spy program. Since these satellites preceded today's era of digital technology, Hexagons recorded images on film, sending them back to Earth in capsules that re-entered Earth's atmosphere and landed within a designated zone near the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

During the first Hexagon mission in the summer of 1971, a parachute carrying one of these capsules broke, and the precious cargo crashed into the ocean and sunk about 16,400 feet (almost 5,000 meters).

To recover the sunken capsule, the U.S. Navy crafted a bold rescue mission that would be carried out by its Trieste II Deep Sea Vehicle, or DSV-1. At the time, this mini-submarine was the Navy's best deep-sea submersible. [Photos: 1972 Spy Satellite Capsule's Deep-Sea Rescue]

The newly declassified CIA documents include a report of the undersea mission and pictures of the Navy's DSV-1 and the film capsule at the bottom of the ocean. The report, which offers a glimpse of the exhilarating events, also explains how and why the CIA decided to retrieve the Hexagon Recovery Vehicle (RV) in the first place.

"The decision was made to attempt the deep sea recovery of the RV primarily for the intelligence value of the film record and secondly to establish a capability for deep oceanographic recovery," intelligence officials wrote.

According to the documents, the Trieste II made three attempts to salvage the film capsule: first on Nov. 3, 1971, then on Nov. 30, 1971, and finally, in a successful third try, on April 25, 1972.

The mission's planners had four primary areas of concern, beginning with the ability to pinpoint the impact area. At that time, no object the size of the film canister had been detected by sonar and been searched for underwater. Officials were also unsure how much damage the capsule had suffered upon impact, and after being submerged in sea water. Finally, the Trieste II had yet to venture below 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) before then.

These obstacles were eventually overcome, and on its third attempt, the Trieste II found its sunken treasure. In the predawn hours of April 26, 1972, the Trieste II emerged about 350 miles (563 kilometers) north of the Hawaiian Islands with the remains of the Hexagon film capsule.

"The third attempt was successful in locating and securing the film stacks; however, as the Trieste was surfacing, the film broke into pieces," officials wrote in their report. "Twenty-five feet was recovered."

The film stack underwent extensive analysis, and it was determined that the Hexagon's Recovery Vehicle broke apart as it crashed into the water. The spools of film were separated from the capsule and several pieces were cut and floated away.

But, all was not lost. The mission proved to be a valuable test of the Navy's ability to carry out deep-sea recovery expeditions. In the report, CIA officials discussed some of the lessons learned, particularly from setbacks that were experienced on all three attempts.

"The third dive, the mechanical arm failed to work, almost preventing operation of the recovery device," the report said. "The on-board computer has never worked. Much more attention is required to the use of high reliability parts and extensive subsystem testing to assure confidence in any given operation."

Still, the mission was seen as a success, even as the motivation for the capsule's recovery shifted from the potential value of the film's reconnaissance, to the usefulness of testing the capabilities of the Trieste II submersible. 

"All of the men involved remained enthusiastic and determined throughout the many frustrations and are to be commended for their fine efforts," the report concluded."

Very interesting! For more on this story including some pictures and comments,
see here: CIA Declassifies Amazing 1972 Spy Satellite Capsule Deep-Sea Rescue

Also, this comment by JoeMawma is very interesting to read relating to this cold war era story
from the Yahoo News article:

"In 1968 a Soviet G-class submarine mysteriously exploded and sank to the bottom of the Pacific. With Cold War secrecy and speed, U.S. military intelligence raced to find a way to raise the sub. In the new preface to this edition of The Jennifer Project, which was first published in 1977, author Clyde Burleson discusses some of the sources he could not reveal twenty years ago and provides an interesting swords-to-plowshares update.

In one of the more remarkable episodes of high-tech espionage and engineering of the Cold War, the effort to raise the Soviet sub, code-named the "Jennifer Project," assembled a cast of players that included top military brass, the CIA, and the eccentric millionaire and inventor Howard Hughes.

The Project was a monumental effort to create a tool that could reach three miles below the ocean's surface and pull the sub from primordial muck—in secret. Financed and built by Hughes and Global Marine under contract with the CIA, the ship created to pluck the sub from the ooze was a technological marvel. Two football fields in length and twenty-three stories high, the Hughes Glomar Explorer held in its hull a six-million-pound submersible "claw" for picking up sections of the submarine.

The project cost the U.S. government hundreds of millions of dollars, but the intelligence community was betting that, if successful, reclamation of the Soviet submarine would mean accessing invaluable military knowledge as the two superpowers neared negotiations in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks. The Jennifer Project revisits a fascinating period of high-level intrigue and invention that has remained unknown to many Americans."


Thanks for the info, Larry too as well for bringing The Jennifer Project up! :)

-Rob

Sasquatch Hand Found July 2012 youtube

Ghosts, Spirits, and Demons!!

Bizarre rock 'ice shelf' found in Pacific, Extraterrestrial Origin: Bizarre Crystal Zipped Here From Outer Space

Bizarre rock 'ice shelf' found in Pacific

From Yahoo News:

A huge cluster of floating volcanic rocks covering almost 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) has been found drifting in the Pacific, the New Zealand navy said Friday.

The strange phenomenon, which witnesses said resembled a polar ice shelf, was made up of lightweight pumice expelled from an underwater volcano, the navy said.

An air force plane spotted the rocks on Thursday about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) offshore from New Zealand and warned a navy warship that it was heading towards them.

Lieutenant Tim Oscar said that while he knew his ship the HMNZS Canterbury was in no danger from the pumice, which is solidified lava filled with air bubbles, it was still "the weirdest thing I've seen in 18 years at sea".

"As far ahead as I could observe was a raft of pumice moving up and down with the swell," he said.
"The rock looked to be sitting two foot (half a metre) above the surface of the waves and lit up a brilliant while colour in the spotlight. It looked exactly like the edge of an ice shelf."

Scientists aboard the ship said the pumice probably came from an underwater volcano called Monowai, which has been active recently.

They said the phenomenon was unrelated to increased volcanic activity in New Zealand this week, including an eruption at Mount Tongariro that sent an ash cloud 20,000 feet into the atmosphere.

Extraterrestrial Origin: Bizarre Crystal Zipped Here From Outer Space:

A sample of a bizarre crystal once considered unnatural may have arrived on Earth 15,000 years ago, having hitched a ride on a meteorite, a new study suggests.

The research strengthens the evidence that this strange "quasicrystal" is extraterrestrial in origin.

The pattern of atoms in a quasicrystal falls short of the perfectly regular arrangement found in crystals. Until

January, all known quasicrystals were man-made. "Many thought it had to be that way, because they thought quasicrystals are too delicate, too prone to crystallization, to form naturally," study researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University told LiveScience at the time.

Then researchers announced the presence of a natural quasicrystal in a meteorite found in the Koryak Mountains of Russia. . That meteorite was being kept in a museum in Italy. Now, on an expedition to the site where it was found in Russia, Steinhardt and his colleagues now have found more natural samples of quasicrystals for analysis.

Mysterious matter

Quasicrystals were first synthesized in a lab in 1982 by Israeli chemist Dan Shechtman, whose work won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011. Regular crystals are made up of regular clusters of repeating atoms arranged in particular symmetries. Quasicrystals are orderly, too, but they do not exactly repeat themselves. If regular crystals are like boring bathroom tiles, quasicrystals are like complex tile mosaics.

Steinhardt and his colleagues were long on the hunt for natural quasicrystals. They first saw one in 2008, when Italian mineralogist Luca Bindi of the Museum of Natural History in Florence spotted a tiny quasicrystal grain in a rock sample in the museum's collection.

The researchers reported that find in the journal Science in 2009 and then traced the rock to Russia. An analysis of the rock fragment, published in January in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that the rock was a meteorite that likely formed in the early solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, before the Earth existed.

The hunt for quasicrystals

Now Steinhardt and Bindi report in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics that quasicrystal samples are found in an environment that would not have had the extremes needed to create them. The report strengthens the case that the sample rode to Earth on a meteorite.

On their expedition to the Koryak Mountains, the researchers also determined that the samples came to Earth during the last glacial period, about 15,000 years ago.

"The fact that the expedition found more material in the same location that we had spent years to track down is a tremendous confirmation of the whole story, which is significant since the meteorite is of great interest because of its extraordinary age and contents," Steinhardt said in a statement.

The next goal, Steinhardt said, is to figure out the secret of the natural quasicrystals' formation.

"What does nature know that we don't?" he said. "How did the quasicrystal form so perfectly inside a complex meteorite when we normally have to work hard in the laboratory to get anything as perfect? What other new phases can we find in this meteorite, and what can they tell us about the early solar system?"

"At the moment, we are at the tip of the iceberg," Steinhardt added.

Cool but rather somewhat odd news for this early in August :) - Rob

Two years later, alien-like sea creature gains Internet stardom

By: Pete Thomas, GrindTV.com and Yahoo News

Among the more bizarre-looking visitors to California waters this summer are Mola molas, or ocean sunfish, which are being seen in unusually high numbers. But it's a stunning photograph of one of these gentle giants that appears to be getting the most attention. The image, captured off San Diego by Daniel Botelho, became an instant hit after being posted last week on his Facebook page.

"It got 1,000 'likes' in 36 hours," said Botelho, an award-winning photojournalist who specializes in underwater photography. Through Monday the number of likes and shares beneath had grown to 1,375 and 1,237, respectively.

There was no back story provided but Botelho, when reached via email, explained that he captured this image in July of 2010, while on a blue whale photography mission. But he somehow placed it in a folder of non-used images and did not discover it until recently, while planning another blue whale odyssey.

The Facebook post was the first time the image had been published. "It is so funny, I wasted that image and after two years I found it, posted it, and it becomes viral," Botelho said.

Though molas are docile and appear sluggish, they're difficult to photograph because they're deceivingly swift and do not generally tolerate divers who try to get close.

"There were more than five in the same spot but once I got in the water, as stealthily as I could, they all went out fast," Botelho explained. "But one specific fish stopped to check what I was, and God knows why the fish decided to follow me. People in the boat said it seemed like a dog following his owner."

The photographer in the image had hoped to photograph Botelho next to the sunfish but instead he became the subject to lend perspective as to how large and moon-like molas can be.

The sunfish can measure 14 feet and weigh as much as 5,000 pounds. They're found in tropical and temperate oceans. With their large bodies, truncated tails, tiny mouths, and huge eyes, they look like something not entirely whole and not of this world.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium, in a species description, states: "Ocean sunfish, or molas, look like the invention of a mad scientist."

They feed primarily on jellies but will also eat squid and small fish. Large numbers of jellies and gelatinous creatures called salps this summer may help to explain an increase in sightings made by California boaters.

-- Image is courtesy of Daniel Botelho for use with this story only, and is protected by copyright laws

-http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog

Note: Awesome pic! -Rob

20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dogs

From: expose-the-light via tumblr:

20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dogs

1  The sultry “dog days of summer” get their name from ancient astronomers who noticed that those days coincide with the period when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun.

 2  Bad astronomy: Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, but it is just one 10-billionth as bright as the sun and has no effect on our weather.

3  Nerd. Fido will touch his nose to a computer screen if it has a picture of a dog on it but not if it shows a landscape, University of Vienna researchers have found.

4  Austrian scientists have also demonstrated that a dog seems to feel “inequity aversion” when another dog gets a better treat as a reward. The envious dog plays hard to get.

5  South Korean scientists cloned four beagle puppies with a gene that produces a fluorescent protein that glows red under ultraviolet light. (The red color is visible in the pups’ bellies and nails even under normal light, but it doesn’t glow.)

6  Maybe they should have offered a Day-Glo option. BioArts, a California company, recently closed its dog-cloning business. One reason: The market was too small.

7  Another problem: “unpredictable results,” according to BioArts. In one case, the clone of a black-and-white dog came out looking greenish yellow.

8  The number of dogs worldwide is estimated at 400 million, roughly the human population of the United States and Mexico combined.

9  They really do look like their owners. In a study conducted at England’s Bath Spa University, people matching photos of dog owners and dogs chose the right breed (out of three) more than half the time.

10  Half of all owners allow their dogs to lick them on the face, but only 10 percent share E. coli strains with their pets. The real factor in germ transmission may be whether an owner washes his hands after playing fetch.

11  Fighting a hangover by drinking “the hair of the dog that bit you” may have originated in an ancient belief that ingesting the hair of a dog that literally bit you could guard against infection.

12  A 2006 study showed that household dogs with minimal training can smell early- and late-stage lung and breast cancers. Swedish oncologists also found that dogs can distinguish among types of ovarian cancer.

13  A dog’s nose has roughly 220 million olfactory receptors, 40 times as many as humans have.

14  Penn State engineers are trying to design an artificial sniffer based on the fluid mechanics and odorant transport of the canine nose.

15  Dogs can hear frequencies up to 45,000 Hz, about twice as high as humans can. But they’re not the champs: Porpoises go to 150,000 Hz.

16  A team led by UCLA biologists concluded that small dogs descended from Middle Eastern gray wolves more than 12,000 years ago. The connection was traced through a growth-factor gene mutation not seen in larger dogs.

17  Much older canid remains have been found in Germany, Russia, and Belgium, dating as far back as 31,000 years.

18  The reference genome for doggie DNA studies is the boxer, a breed that has an unusually high degree of genetic uniformity.

19  So that’s why schnauzers look like Groucho. According to scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute, an alteration in one gene, RSPO2, gives dogs wiry eyebrows and mustaches.

20  A variant of another gene, FGF5, produces long, silky coats, and curly hair comes from a mutation in KRT71. All three variants produce a coat like that of the Portuguese water dog adopted by the First Family.

http://discovermagazine.com

Could We Build 'Star Trek's' Starship Enterprise? Maybe...

The following technology article comes from: could-build-star-treks-starship-enterprise

"Since its first appearance on the original "Star Trek" series in 1966, the starship Enterprise has become a symbol for space travel. Recently, an anonymous engineerclaimed that an approximation of this iconic ship could be built in the next two decades. But just how close is mankind to zipping through the stars at warp speed?

On the website BuildTheEnterprise.org, a self-proclaimed engineer who identifies himself only as "BTE-Dan" suggests that a working facsimile of the iconic ship could be built and launched over the next 20 to 30 years. The ship would require a few modifications, but would look a great deal like Captain Kirk's famous ship.

Built in space, the ship would never visit the surface of any moon or planet, and so would never need to reach the high speeds necessary to escape surface gravity. The engines would be powered by nuclear reactors onboard the ship, and use argon rather than xenon for propellant, saving a few hundred billion dollars in cost. As an added bonus, BTE-Dan notes that argon can be mined from the atmosphere of Mars.

Although such a ship would a lack a warp drive (the technology that allows the "Star Trek" version to zip between stars across the galaxy), it could reach the moon in three days and Mars in three months. BTE-Dan suggests it might function as a combination of a space station and a space port, allowing humans to orbit planets and moons within the solar system while using a "universal lander" to travel to and from their surfaces. Such a spaceship could house 1,000 people within its gravity wheel

The entire ship would be more than 3,000 feet (almost 1 kilometer) long, with its central disk making up nearly half its length.

According to the website, much of the technology needed to build the ship described is within our grasp, including the rotating gravity wheel, which could be suspended by electromagnets within a vacuum to eliminate mechanical wear and tear. Also easily within reach, he claims, are a 1.5 GWe (gigawatt electrical) nuclear reactor safe to carry in a spacecraft, and composite materials that would save mass, add strength and improve radiation shielding.

Design challenges

BTE-Dan describes himself as a systems and electrical engineer who has spent the past 30 years employed at a Fortune 500 company. He is presently declining interviews.

Though the prospect of a real-life Enterprise is appealing, the proposed ship is not without problems.

Adam Crowl, an engineer with Icarus Interstellar Inc., a nonprofit foundation dedicated to interstellar exploration, pointed out that a spaceship built with a sufficiently powerful nuclear reactor would need large thermal radiators, ruining the classic Enterprise look.

"Engineering physics doesn't respect our aesthetics," he told SPACE.com by email.

BTE-Dan's ship is essentially an iconic replica of the famous starship, and may not be practical.

"I would love to see 1,000 people go to Mars, but I need convincing that they need to be on the Enterprise to do so," said Crowl.

Other engineers said the similarities between BTE-Dan's ship and the Enterprise are only skin-deep.

"He wants to build something using foreseeable technology that just looks like the Enterprise," said Marc Millis, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center. "It's nowhere close to being what the Enterprise is."

Still, the site received so many visits soon after its launch that it crashed, revealing how appealing the idea is to many people.

Today's technology

Though some aspects of the Enterprise are far out of reach today, many are within our grasp, and some are part of our daily lives. Sliding doors, futuristic in the 1960s, now welcome almost every grocery store visitor, and today's flip-open cellphones resemble Star Trek's tricorders. The touch-screen devices ubiquitous today even look like those used in the 1990s episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

"If you had shown someone an iPad in the 1990s and told them it was 23rd century technology, they would have believed you," Richard Obousy, co-founder and president of Icarus Interstellar Inc., told SPACE.com.

Advances with 3D printers also provide opportunities for voyages through space, allowing the replication of parts while using materials found at the destination. Andreas Hein, an aerospace engineer also with Icarus Interstellar, suggested that it might not be long before such printers make food similar to the way meals were synthesized by replicators on the Enterprise.

Additionally, engineers working at NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, informally known as Eagleworks, are working on a Q-thruster that bears a striking resemblance to the impulse engines on the Enterprise.

Nuclear woes

Millis suggested the next step in rocket propulsion will likely include utilizing a nuclear power source, an option that is stymied by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He acknowledged that the barriers aren't just political ones, as people are nervous about the idea of launching nuclear rockets from Earth's surface, despite the fact that it could be done safely.

Obousy agreed that nuclear rockets could provide the necessary thrust, pointing to the large, multibillion-dollar projects around the world seeking ways to unlock fusion as an energy source. Of course, such projects primarily focus on powering homes and cities on Earth, but once unlocked, fusion could be used to travel through the stars.

"In terms of propulsion technology, fusion engines are potentially within a generation or two," Obousy said, though he added that sudden technological jumps could accelerate the process.

Visiting a planet without being seen may also be not too far out of reach.

"We're doing things with meta-materials that'll allow practical cloaking, maybe even invisibility," Crowl said.

Gravity presents one of the greatest challenges: The Enterprise of television and the movies lacks a gravity wheel, instead utilizing synthetic gravity. According to Millis, if we could find a way to master gravitational forces, such technology could also be utilized in tractor beams or the ship's propulsion.

Warp speed ahead

"Star Trek"-like propulsion remains a key problem. Fans are familiar with the warp drive, which accelerated the ship faster than the speed of light and allowed its crew to zip between stars. Such travel defies our present understanding of physics.

"I think this is one of the most important aspects that prevents an Enterprise-type ship in the near future," Hein said.

Obousy agreed. "One of the staples of these warp drives is that they require an exotic form of energy that we have not been able to create in the labs, dark energy being the salient example," he said.

Dark energy is the unexplained force behind the accelerated expansion of the universe. Scientists don't yet understand what it is, which makes it a challenge to use in propulsion.

A warp drive would require an enormous amount of energy. Theoretical calculations using dark energy to move a starship would require more energy than that contained within the planet Jupiter, making it uneconomical.

In the "Star Trek" universe, the warp drive relied on antimatter. When matter and antimatter annihilate one another, the energy produced is immense. Though such an energy source could conceivably power the ship, it is available only briefly.

Crowl pointed out that antimatter technology itself is developing rapidly. Ultra-high intensity lasers may soon allow it to be directly created from energy, and useful amounts may be trapped in the magnetic fields of planets like Earth and Saturn.

But, like dark energy, antimatter may prove to be more trouble than it's worth.

"Using antimatter right now is very expensive," Millis said. "But that doesn't mean that it always will be."

When mankind finally travels to the stars, we may have to forgo warp speed for something else, such as the manipulation of space-time itself. According to Albert Einstein, nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. But Millis points out that such limits do not necessarily apply to space-time. Theories in peer-reviewed journals explore the possibility of surrounding a craft with a bubble of space-time that expands and contracts, perhaps allowing it to exceed the speed of light.

"It's the difference between moving a pencil across a piece of paper or moving the whole paper," Millis said.

Beam me up, Scotty

Another potential challenge to recreating the "Star Trek" universe is the system of matter transmission. The crew often traveled to a planet by transporter, beaming from the Enterprise directly to the surface by way of machines that could scan a body, atom-by-atom, and then recreate it in another place.

Recent advances have been made in quantum teleportation, but Obousy and Millis both stressed the difference from "Star Trek"-style travel.

In quantum teleportation, "it's not the same photon you started out with, but a replica," said Obousy.

Such travel would require enormous precision.

"If you were going to recreate a human being transported from one place to another, you'd want to make sure everything's in the exact place," he said.

Millis suggested that, rather than matter transmission, scientists might one day learn how to utilize very small wormholes for travel.

"Of course, if you put mass through it, it might make the wormhole collapse," he noted.

Ultimately, the greatest challenge to replicating the Star Trek journeys may not come from the technological front.

"One of the things that I really liked about watching [the show] was the very good behavior of the crew," Millis said. "The prejudices and petty human differences that make up so much of television are pretty much absent. When I think about relative impossibilities, I think it will be easier to make technology for the starship Enterprise than to finally make humans behave that honorably."

Visit www.buildtheenterprise.org to see more details on the proposed construction of a real-life Enterprise.

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