Will "Star Trek" ever become a reality?

Question

Will "Star Trek" ever become a reality?

Answer 1

?,

The cell phone was created by an Engineer who loved Star Trek. Drones are unmanned Shuttle Crafts. It is happening. You should take a tour of JPL.

Answer 2

Some of it already has.



The Cell Phone is reality TODAY, because the President of Motorola wanted to have a "communicator" like Cpt. James Kirk's from the original series. I STILL have a good old reliable Flip-Fone.



The medical beds from the original Star Trek are ALMOST a reality in today's modern hospitals. Although the patient is still hooked up using wires and sensors, the electronic signals are displayed on computer screens beside the bed, and the data can be transmitted to computers in the Nurses Station dozens of feet away.



Phasers are not in existence, but burning and cutting lasers are -- but not as weapons. The laser weapons platform is still non-existent, but you may expect to see them in the next 50 years.



You can get an almost-pretty-good Universal Translator as an "add in" to your Web Browser or Microsoft Word. Being able to TALK to a computer has been a reality for a long time, but getting it to understand you AND respond in an innocuous female voice is as close as your Smart-phone and Siri.



We still can't have Scotty "beam us up". That is a VERY difficult task. But research shows that it may be possible using inanimate, non-living objects in the next 300-500 years.



Warp Drive is still missing two of its key components -- the Graviton (the particle by which gravity energy is transferred), and a power source powerful enough to produce them. Dilithium is, of course, a myth, but that's OK -- dilithium FOCUSES the energy, but it does not PRODUCE the energy.



[There is simply NO anti-matter in existence. It can be made only ONE atom at a time using a Super-collider. But when ONE atom is made, it almost immediately collides with an atom of matter, and annihilates itself before it can be "captured" and stored. While Einstein's Equation has been proven true, only two atoms is still a VERY tiny amount of energy.]



Anti-gravs, force fields, cloaking devices, and things like that have already proven themselves to be MUCH harder to make than to dream about. But these devices are much more likely to come true before the fabled Warp Drive can be brought into existence.



CAN Star Trek become a reality? Maybe. WILL it become a reality? Probably not, at least not until well after the 24th Century (about 300 years from now) time frame when Star Trek takes place.

Answer 3

It's very unlikely that the future will be anything similar to today's science fiction. Look at science fiction from 100 years ago or more to get an idea of this. Today's world is far different than anyone before had imagined. To be critical, however, Star Trek itself is extremely unrealistic. The aliens for example are depicted as mostly humanoids who are even capable of cross-breeding with humans from Earth, which is improbably to the point of impossible. The science is all fake, invented merely to support the plot line. A lot of the plot lines themselves are overly spectacular, designed only to "wow" the audience. I believe the future will be very different, which in no way diminishes the potential quality of it, by the way. It's better, in fact, that the future remains unknown, and not something predicted by a scientifically illiterate Hollywood producer.

Answer 4

Some scientists estimate that we could possibly be traveling to our first star in 1000 years, and populate the whole galaxy in a mere 5-50 million years. So it is possible, but humans won't really be humans by that time, we will be so evolved through are research and tech by then it will be hard to find much human in them.

Answer 5

Probably more like the social structure of the "In a Mirror Darkly".



The Alcubierre drive shows that a warp engine does not violate our current theories of space but it would require a large amount of negative energy which we can only produce in very very small quantities and that's not likely to change. However, the technological basis of Star Trek has some basis in what we know. The question is if such a benign social structure possible?

Answer 6

We are always limited by our current technology to boldly go where no one has gone before (sorry, I could not resist - it was futile). Right now, warp drive is impossible based on our understanding of physics. However, our understanding of physics has changed in my lifetime from the long-standing belief that nothing can travel faster than light but that is no longer true. The idea of transporters was pure fiction ten years ago but in the last decade scientists have "transported" molecules from one location to another and they remained in the same order they were "sent". Not quite a human but a first step. Cloaking devices? Fanciful fiction for many years but also in the last decade, cloaking devices that literally bend light around them so that you see around objects has been published in several journals, including Science (official peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) one of the two premier journals in the world. So, right now warp drive is as far off the radar as phones, let alone cell phones or email were were 100 years ago.

Answer 7

I hope so, but I doubt it.





I think the technological developments are more plausible than the social ones. For example, there is no money or greed in Star Trek (aside from Ferengi.) They have essentially adopted a communist society in which individuals are focused on exploration, knowledge, and the betterment of mankind.



In the world of Star Trek people have abandoned religion and superstition and have embraced diversity, but I see no indication of that happening any time soon.