Star Trek-inspired control center under construction
Don’t you think it’s about time the United States government built a Star Trek-inspired space control center? Well the US Department of Defense thought so and started working on one.
They are working on a flight deck that would look as though it came straight off the Enterprise and would give them the capability to monitor practically everything in earth’s orbit. Thousands and thousands of items and objects are currently roaming the skies, cluttering space and posing a risk to any shuttles or ships and our current monitoring systems are getting pretty overwhelmed.
Subtly named The Hallmark Software Testbed Project, the aim is to build a modern control center to allow commanders to monitor threats in near space. Since space launches started to get commercial with Space X and other companies launching objects into space on a weekly basis, the amount of debris has increased and so too has the risks posed from junk as large as a car in an area much larger than our own ocean.
3D holograms showing the trajectories and orbits of such objects might seem like something of science fiction fantasy, but the builders think it will be an amazing feat of engineering and a necessary step to protecting anything we launch, given that the current systems built to monitor such objects were built many years ago.
DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office said:
"“The volume of Earth’s operational space domain is hundreds of thousands times larger than the Earth’s oceans. It contains thousands of objects hurtling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. The scales and speeds in this extreme environment are difficult enough to grasp conceptually, let alone operationally, as is required for commanders overseeing the nation’s increasingly critical space assets.”"
"“We envision a system that would fuse information from diverse sources and vastly reduce the overall time required to make and execute decisions and observe results. For example, an intuitive user interface incorporating 3-D visualization technology would present complex information in novel ways and provide commanders with unprecedented awareness and comprehension.”"
It would not be the first time that government agencies have borrowed ideas from Star Trek, as NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander modeled his own control center on a Star Trek set and even had a Hollywood designer recreate the set.
DARPA also make some other pretty cool stuff, some of it doesnt seem too far away from what we might see on a Federation ship from Star Trek:
Next: 10 Reasons Why Picard Was The Best Captain
Would you like the chance to work in the Star Trek-inspired control room? How ‘Trek’ would it be? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.