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Sci-Fi Television

How Las Vegas Missed Out on a Life-Sized Starship Enterprise 240

Posted by timothy from the oh-the-the-huge-manatee dept.
T-Kir writes "Apparently 20 years ago, instead of the Fremont Experience, downtown Las Vegas was actually close to building a life sized version of the refit USS Enterprise, and would have — had it not been for the then studio chairman Stanley Jaffe nixing it at the final meeting. The project had support from Paramount licensing and then-CEO Sherry Lansing, the Las Vegas Mayor, and the downtown redevelopment committee, but not opinion of Mr Jaffe: 'I don't want to be the guy that approved this and then it's a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever.' As a Trek fan, I'm saddened that this never got built because I feel that this would've appealed to a much wider audience than science fiction fans. Props to io9 for picking this story up."
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How Las Vegas Missed Out on a Life-Sized Starship Enterprise More

How Las Vegas Missed Out on a Life-Sized Starship Enterprise

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  • RAGE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:01PM (#39614103)

    KAHN!!!

  • WHICH ONE?! (Score:2)

    by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <<taiki> <at> <cox.net>> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:11PM (#39614137)

    Enterprise A? Or Enterprise D?

    The images from the site aren't showing up. :(

  • Really just as well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:11PM (#39614139)

    While it sounds awesome, the guy who cancelled it is right on the money - it would have just sat there for some time languisingh after the novelty wore off for people.

    Vegas already had the coolest Star Trek exhibit/show I've ever seen (Qwark's bar and two really well done shows). That is gone now. If those great shows could not survive, no way the Enterprise would have lasted.

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:15PM (#39614173) Homepage

      Just like the novelty of the Eifel Tower, Liberty Statue, Tower of Pisa, etc. have worn off?

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:3)

      by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <<taiki> <at> <cox.net>> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:17PM (#39614185)

      You're more right than you think. Downtown Las Vegas until VERY recently(within the last 5 years or so?) has languished BADLY.

      If they built a giant Enterprise, it'd just sit there and become a giant eyesore.

      STILL, it would've been cool as fuck the first few trips down.

      • Re:Really just as well (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:29PM (#39614251)

        If they built a giant Enterprise, it'd just sit there and become a giant eyesore.

        If they built a giant Enterprise, they'd probably have trekkie fans all over the world visting downtown vegas. And moving to the city.

        You know that would still be a big attraction today. But in 40 or 50 years, yeah, it would eventually become a giant eyesore.

        • Re:Really just as well (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:39PM (#39614893)

          You know that would still be a big attraction today. But in 40 or 50 years, yeah, it would eventually become a giant eyesore.

          TOS debuted in 1966, that's 46 years ago. It's as popular today as it ever was. At this point, it's safe to say it's a hallmark of science fiction. A life-sized replica would remain culturally relevant for much longer than 50 years. It's hard to imagine that people would ever look at it and say "what's that supposed to be?" and even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.

          People often bring up the idea that a megastructure may become an eyesore over time. I can't think of an example where that's been true. As far as buildings go, if it's huge and strange looking, people will be impressed buy it. It doesn't matter how old it is.

          • Re:Really just as well (Score:2)

            by ShakaUVM ( 157947 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @09:53PM (#39615627) Homepage Journal

            >>even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.

            1d4

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:31PM (#39614255)
      "it would have just sat there for some time languisingh after the novelty wore off for people."

      Much like the manned space race itself...

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:3)

      by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @06:14PM (#39614461)

      I dont think so. First part of it at least could have been a hotel and restaurant, casino, etc, and those things dont wear off. But i really think that the interest would have held up and would have become very popular, if it was lifelike enough,.

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:2)

      by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:55PM (#39614959)
      I checked out the exhibit and bar several years after it came out. It was still packed with fans. Pretty cool to see all that stuff up close.

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08, 2012 @10:21PM (#39615755)

      Vegas did indeed have the coolest Star Trek exhibit/show. It eventually turned into a very expensive and poorly managed coolest Start Trek exhibit/show. When you charge in the neighborhood of the admission price of a full theme park for what IN a full theme park would be a couple of shows, you're not going to attract non-geeks and the generally curious. I went there every time I was in Vegas while it was there and I'm glad I did, but I also watched the prices go up, the quantity of shows go down, Quark's Bar always inaccessible because of being booked for a wedding or some "special event" or just plain closed early because somebody wanted to save payroll. My first visit, which was several years after the attraction opened, I had to wait in decently long lines to get in. The last couple of years--barely any, and I STILL couldn't get in to have a drink at Quark's.

      Point is: it's not good to say something failed because people didn't want it. Management or lack of it has a LOT to do with stuff like that.

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:3)

      by Xeranar ( 2029624 ) on Monday April 09, 2012 @01:22AM (#39616605)

      Honestly in 1992 if they had built a $150 Million dollar Enterprise (even if it was 30 or so years prior to the current universe they were promoting) would have kept Star Trek active a great deal longer. Instead of DS9 & Voyager on their own private UPN they would have probably landed on CBS or NBC. The benefit of it existing would drive trekkies into a frenzy so that not only would it make a constant revenue stream available but it would essentially cement Star Trek as a permanent part of reality. As it stands unless they continue the current Star Trek continuum with the new Kirk when the baby boomer and Gen X generation get older and pass Star Trek will largely pass with them. Already shows like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are starting to suffer that effect. I see it as both a great loss for Paramount and Trekkies but also for culture in general. With that giant ship constantly there we would have always had a nagging reminder of Star Trek in our minds, driving us into space with vigor.

    • Re:Really just as well (Score:3)

      by scharkalvin ( 72228 ) on Monday April 09, 2012 @09:11AM (#39617991) Homepage

      Hey this is Vegas. The full size Enterprise could have become a hotel (just how many crew staterooms ARE there on the USS Enterprise?). As a hotel it would have been booked solid FOREVER (who wouldn't want to stay there?) They would have had to build the turbo lifts oversized and have more of them then in the plans though, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough elevator capacity for all the guests. You know the real Enterprise (as per the published plans) had a bowling alley and a full size swimming pool?

  • Backroom land deals? (Score:3)

    by ScooterComputer ( 10306 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:15PM (#39614169)

    Next we'll have an informer tell us that Mr. Jaffe has been busy secretly buying up property in Iowa.

  • I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flogger ( 524072 ) <non@nonegiven> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:15PM (#39614175) Journal
    But if there was a "Life-Sized" enterprise in which I could book passage (rent a room) and visit 10-Forward or see the bridge, I would make the "trek" to vegas. I am sure I am not the only tight ass that would do this... Flop? I don;t thin it would be, espesially if they built the Emporer's imperial cruiser next door and they had weekly geek fights to see which would win. :-)

    • Re:I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:2)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:35PM (#39614275) Journal

      But if there was a "Life-Sized" enterprise in which I could book passage (rent a room) and visit 10-Forward or see the bridge, I would make the "trek" to vegas. I am sure I am not the only tight ass that would do this... Flop? I don;t thin it would be, espesially if they built the Emporer's imperial cruiser next door and they had weekly geek fights to see which would win. :-)

      That was my thinking. An Enterprise hotel that looked just like the sets on the inside would be a huge attraction. If you could build something as massive as the D model, then wow at the hotel possibilities, with a Ten Forward bar and restaurant, and quarters that looked like the ones from the series.

    • Re:I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:39PM (#39614307)

      It wasn't a full life sized one, but the Hilton in Vegas had a fully built full size STTNG bridge as an attraction, along with turbolifts and such. It looked pretty much exactly like the TV show and they had actors in full costume. There was a bar and restraut with it as well, but it was more like the Star Wars cantina with Star Trek decorations.

      They shut the entire thing down about 2 years ago, it had been there for a long time before that.

    • Geeks and Vegas don't mix (Score:2)

      by hweimer ( 709734 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @06:34PM (#39614569) Homepage

      There's a rumor that the American Physical Society is banned from hosting their conferences in Vegas because physicists don't gamble, don't have champagne parties with hookers, and drink considerably less then the average Vegas-goer. I'd assume that these points also applied to anyone getting excited about a Star Trek themed hotel.

      • Re:Geeks and Vegas don't mix (Score:3)

        by million_monkeys ( 2480792 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @10:09PM (#39615699)

        There's a rumor that the American Physical Society is banned from hosting their conferences in Vegas because physicists don't gamble, don't have champagne parties with hookers, and drink considerably less then the average Vegas-goer. I'd assume that these points also applied to anyone getting excited about a Star Trek themed hotel.

        You don't know many physicists, do you?

      • Re:Geeks and Vegas don't mix (Score:4, Funny)

        by modecx ( 130548 ) on Monday April 09, 2012 @01:06AM (#39616553)

        Quite the contrary, as you know, physicists are big into experimentation. Vegas would love to have the physicists, except... Well, you know how people sometimes get a little crazy on the Las Vegas booze, hookers and drugs scene, and cause a ruckus; there was one year the Physical Society's meeting happened to overlap with the pharmacist's and psychiatrist's conventions...going on, oh about 50 years ago now.

        Now, some people are bound to call me a liar, or say I have a runaway imagination, but buried in a vault somewhere under Washington, there's a classified briefing my grand-pappy told me about--he was a fed you see--and if you go down to the FBI office and ask someone, they're going to deny it and look at you like you're some kind of lunatic. And if you press 'em on it, they're going to call the cops and people with white coats. That's when you know you've got 'em in a lie, it's right in the secret FBI training manual under Chapter 11, Deny, Divert and Attack! You know, so you'd better not. Ask anyone that is.

        Anyway, to make a short story long, many of the physicists, pharmacists, and psychiatrists shared the same hotel, and as is always the case in a large enough group of people, some of the pharmacists were into the...recreational side of their business, and the psychiatrists, well, you know how they always want to know what makes people tick.

        As a prank, and to get the physicists to loosen up, the pharmacists slipped a bunch of amphetamines and the psychiatry researchers' LSD into the physicists' punch bowl. Nobody knows how they did it, but the hopped-up and wigged-out physicists spent the next five days straight in the conference room where they built at life size, fully functional replica of Big Boy, right there in Sands Hotel.

        Now, this was also about the time the Roswell aliens escaped Area 51, the aliens kidnapped the atom bomb and held Las Vegas as ransom for their flying saucer and took Humphrey Bogart hostage...but I digress. That's a whole 'nother story, and if I told you I'd have to kill you. So, in a nutshell, that's why LSD research was banned, because when you mix physicists with amphetamines, LSD, and spiked punch, doomsday almost happens, and aliens fly off with Humphrey fucking Bogart. We just can't take the chance.

    • Re:I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:26PM (#39614819)

      yea every nerd would do it a time or two and once the novelty wore off your left with a undesirable building sucking up space

  • oh forget that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:25PM (#39614225)
    sure it would look like the Star Trek Enterprise on the outside but once you get inside it then it will be like any other Las Vegas casino = full of slot machines, roulette wheels, blackjack tables etc...etc...etc... which would ruin the whole thing

    http://i.imgur.com/kezWj.jpg [imgur.com]

  • Gambling (Score:2)

    by stevegee58 ( 1179505 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:28PM (#39614245) Journal
    OP said he was saddened it wasn't built, but the real question is would he have actually gone to Vegas and left money there in the casino?
    That's all that matters to casinos, Enterprise ships or not.

  • You know what would help? (Score:3)

    by 50000BTU_barbecue ( 588132 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:36PM (#39614281) Journal
    What size we are talking about here. I don't know about you, I don't know offhand the "real" size of the Enterprise.

    From wiki:

    Length 642.5 Meters

    Width 467.0 Meters

    Height 137.5 Meters

    This is not trivial. There are no structural integrity fields in the real world. 150M$ for that? Doubtful.

  • He doesn't undeestand how Vegas works (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sprior ( 249994 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:43PM (#39614325) Homepage

    Nothing sits for long after it stops being popular/profitable, they implode it and build something else.

  • I vote for 1701-A (Score:3)

    by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:51PM (#39614347)

    I think 1701-A of 1701-B would look best with a crew staffed in ST II-VI uniforms. There could be a hotel inside, as well as restaurants, all themed like the real ship.

    I was never fond of 1701-D or nor the crews unform from that era, though, the STNG series was well written and well executed. I always wished they could couple the story line quality of STNG with the styles of the 1701-A or 1701-B era. I found the tight fitting uniforms of D to be cheesy and the ship too cheesy as well.

    Another factor is the 1701-A was a much smaller ship than the D, the D is just a huge thing that might be completely infeasible to build, if they want to build the thing to spec, it would be enormous.

    I imagine this thing could have rather than a mock up, could have been an entire building, including a built in hotel and so on. But the saucer section raises quistions on structural support, I am not sure if it would be possible to construct an unsupported, hanging saucer section without some sort of supports from below, in a feasible way. Having support columns from below for the saucer section would take away from the whole thing. Probably the main hull could be fully occupied hotel and attraction space and they might have to settle with a shell for saucer, with some places inside being built, such as the bridge and so on, unless a way can be found to build the saucer.

    • Re:I vote for 1701-A (Score:2)

      by garyebickford ( 222422 ) <`gar37bic' `at' `gmail.com'> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:24PM (#39614799)

      But the saucer section raises quistions on structural support, I am not sure if it would be possible to construct an unsupported, hanging saucer section without some sort of supports from below, in a feasible way. Having support columns from below for the saucer section would take away from the whole thing. Probably the main hull could be fully occupied hotel and attraction space and they might have to settle with a shell for saucer, with some places inside being built, such as the bridge and so on, unless a way can be found to build the saucer.

      You realize, of course, that this analysis defeats the whole engineering model for the ship itself - ostensibly designed to handle the stresses of battle, which can easily exceed the pathetic 1G that the Earth would exert on it. :)

      I always did think the engineering design of the Enterprise was a bit dicey for a military system - too much weight hanging out on skinny spars. But, having said that, I think it would be doable in the sense that one could build something that could handle the the weight, wind stress, etc. But it might have a problem with swaying and vibration. There are some pretty extreme buildings being built all over the world (mostly not including the US), like that one in China that looks like two upside-down 'L' shapes that meet at the corner.

    • Re:I vote for 1701-A (Score:2)

      by zippthorne ( 748122 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:44PM (#39614923) Journal

      If you were going to build the "D", I think you'd take advantage of the idea that the saucer section is detachable, and build it separate from the engineering section.

      This gives much better vertical support for both sections, and also improves your flexibility with land use footprint.

  • Then you can pack more gamblers inside, than it appears outside. The dream of every casino owner.

    And if the house starts to lose big time . . . just skip back in time, to before the bets were placed.

  • Two compound words: (Score:2)

    by trout007 ( 975317 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @06:37PM (#39614589)

    Holodeck Whorehouse.

  • Quark's @ The Hilton (Score:3)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @06:38PM (#39614591) Homepage

    I'm not super-trekkie, but I know from personal experience that the Hilton in Vegas through away massive amounts of convention/conference business when it closed down Quark's. =\

    I miss my Moogie's Choice Pasta and Warp Core Breach

  • Foolish decision to nix it. (Score:2)

    by CFBMoo1 ( 157453 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @06:38PM (#39614595) Homepage
    Seriously this would have gotten me to make regular visits to Vegas just to see the whole damn thing. Also if they bundled this with actual science type things it would have been fantastic. Hell I bet even Neal deGrasse Tyson would have done one of his talks/shows/etc from the bridge if they worked things out right. It'd have been a boon for education, science, and future dreamers. The money draw in would have been huge.

  • As a Trek fan, I'm saddened that this never got built because I feel that this would've appealed to a much wider audience than science fiction fans.

    Are you new here? Stop whining about what somebody else shoulda oughtta done and put your efforts where your conviction is: throw a proposal up on Kickstarter or similar and then wait for the millions of dollars to roll in from all these alleged Trekkies-in-the-closet. If you're not just nuts, then you get to build the Enterprise, and if you are just nuts, then you'll have it confirmed in a way you can't ignore....

  • Biggest reason this fell through: (Score:3)

    by Bieeanda ( 961632 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @07:20PM (#39614787)
    The powers that be in Vegas refused to license Fizzbin tables.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @09:27PM (#39615493)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Geek Paradise? (Score:3)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday April 09, 2012 @01:51AM (#39616681)

      I'd rather put it into California. Make it a conference hotel and invite every half way on-the-edge tech conference over. It's no secret that a fair lot of the tech people are big into Star Trek (hell, when I was with a not-so-unimportant IT-Security company my boss was one of the biggest trekkers I ever met. Imagine your boss coming in at Halloween in full Klingon war gear, and even having the body to actually look impressive in it). That should make it fairly simple to stay ahead of the tech curve if you manage to convince the relevant corporations that you are THE place tech cons go.

      Plus, I'm fairly sure you can convince quite a few geeks to be your maintenance crew for a free stay during their vacation. I mean... let's be honest here, you get to stay in the coolest hotel on this planet AND you get to toy with on-the-edge IT tech, all for free, and you are asked to actually put together and install that nifty technology and toy with it 'til it works... Where do I sign?

  • CSI (Score:4, Funny)

    by shentino ( 1139071 ) <shentino@gmail.com> on Sunday April 08, 2012 @09:48PM (#39615607)

    I guess it was just

    *shades*

    Too much of a gamble

  • Lucky break (Score:2)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @11:15PM (#39616049) Journal

    It's a good thing they never built this full-sized Enterprise replica. By now it would be looking pretty shabby. It would have been become cheesy and embarrassing. At its best, Star Trek was kitsch (in a good sense). Kitsch on a scale like this, in Las Vegas, would have pretty much spoiled a great experience.

    Big things in Las Vegas tend to end up looking small and sad. I'm a fan of the place, honestly, but whenever it tries to assimilate pop culture of a vintage later than the Rat Pack, it always ends up diminishing it (except for Wayne Newton and the Super Bowl, who Las Vegas managed to make a little bit heroic). Does the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower gain stature by being part of Vegas or lose it?

    Further, Las Vegas has become itself diminished by becoming more "family friendly". It now feels like some hip night club after last call when the house lights come up. Everything that was cool and filled with sex and promise is now wan and grimy. Vegas was once a wonderland of possibilities (almost entirely unfulfilled but still fun) and is now a slightly nauseous mix.

    Best that it leaves our memories alone. The Enterprise in Las Vegas would have been the Star Wars Christmas Special without the charm, ugly and shabby and small.

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