Eric Limer took a look at how much it would cost to build the Starship Enterprise:

• Limer assumes that the half-mile long enterprise is equivalent to two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, each of which costs $6.2 billion.
• The closest thing we have to a holodeck is Microsoft’s IllumiRoom technology and the CAVE 2. Overall the closest approximation of the system we could get would cost $1.1 million.
• We need to arm our enterprise with proton torpedoes…except…they haven’t really been invented yet. The UGM-133 Trident II is a nuclear tipped ballistic missile. 38 of them would cost $6 billion.
• You’d need at least 11 officers on deck and if you use the cost of a soldier in Iraq for a year, then you’ll have to pay them $15.4 million.
• But the biggest cost is getting all of these materials into space where presumably they’ll be assembled. Overall that would cost more than $475 billion.
• This puts the total cost of the Enterprise at just under $500 billion or…12.6% of America’s total budget. Time for a petition?

Read about other costs associated with building the Enterprise and more over here. You can check out our own attempt at using a battleship to estimate the cost of a spaceship over here.

Source: Gizmodo