How Las Vegas Missed Out on a Life-Sized Starship Enterprise 240
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."
Re:WHICH ONE?! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:They are timeless and universal (Score:5, Informative)
All of them except for the Pisa tower are far larger than the Enterprise would have been.
I had to google the exact measures but the Eiffel Tower (320 m) is way bigger than the other two monuments (I've seen the three of them with my eyes). It's a little taller than what the Enterprise is long (286 m). The Statue of Liberty (93 m) is much smaller and the statue alone (46 m) without the base would be shorter than the Pisa tower (58 m). Check this [garygoddard.com] for the relative sizes (Pisa tower not included).
Re:I've never had a desire to go to Vegas (Score:4, Informative)
Damn, you just made me realize how little men have been objectified in Star Trek compared to women. I demand equality! Chris Pine needs to go shirtless the entire next movie to help make up for it.
Women: ....
* At least one major character per series whose job included being sexy: Counselor Troi (TNG), Yeoman Rand and Uhura (TOS), Seven of Nine (VOY), T'Pol (ENT), and Dax (DS9)
* Orion slave girls as in TOS: The Cage [memory-alpha.org] and ENT: Bound [memory-alpha.org] (three at once there)
* Kirk's various women
* Dabo girls throughout DS9
* Numerous other women in skimpy outfits, eg. Vanessa William's character in the horrible episode DS9: Let He Who Is Without Sin... [memory-alpha.org], Tasha's seduction scene in TNG: The Naked Now [memory-alpha.org], Uhura's sexy dance in the movie that does not exist,
Men:
* Trip saving the ship in his underwear in ENT: Aquisition [memory-alpha.org] and a few other shirtless scenes, usually with T'Pol
* Several scenes with Kirk at least partly shirtless for very little reason in TOS
* Scattered shirtlessness as in the Edo episode (also had women in skimpy outfits), the horrible DS9 episode above (brief), Sulu in The Naked Time
* (Counts negative) Leonard Nimoy shirtless on Nazi-episode-planet
Actually, The Naked Time reminded me of something. There's a hilarious moment at the end of the episode after McCoy develops a serum to cure everyone. He goes around the bridge injecting people, and when he gets to Kirk, for no apparent reason he grabs Kirk's shoulder and rips his shirt open before injecting him like everyone else. It's so gratuitous--I would absolutely love a brief parody of that scene in the next movie.
Re:WHICH ONE?! (Score:4, Informative)
1701-D would have been huge, perhaps too large to be feasible, the !701-A was 289 M long, 72 M high and 127 meters wide which would make it a lot more feasible
Re:They are timeless and universal (Score:4, Informative)
There's a Tower of Pisa in Vegas?
Not exactly, but it was called that early in its development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veer_Towers [wikipedia.org]
Google Street View Link [google.com]
Re:I vote for 1701-A (Score:4, Informative)
Supposedly the Constitution class could do saucer-sep maneuvers nearly as easily as the Galaxy class.
Don't know if that's canon or not, but I definitely read it in a novel or two back in the day.
Re:WHICH ONE?! (Score:5, Informative)
This is a point worth emphasising. The actual ships in Star Trek really are on an space age scale. The ship supposed to be over 1km long.
Rather than quote statistics, I'll just link to a Minecraft Megaproject video [youtube.com] of a virtual 1:1 scale model of the ship (to 1m resolution). It's a lot bigger than the impression given by the Paramounts sets in the show. Seeing shuttle-bay 1 was an experience in itself, and illustrative of just how infeasible building such an object would really be.
Except Eiffel Tower was no monument (Score:4, Informative)
In Bavaria, Ludwig II von Sachsenhausen caused a load of pre-Hollywood fantasy castles to be built; for many people they are the defining image of Bavaria. Personally I barely know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars, but I suspect that a huge building in the shape of an enormous fantasy spaceship would, in exactly the same way, define its own myth. If it wasn't built too well, before long there would be a campaign to rebuild or restore it.
Re:WHICH ONE?! (Score:5, Informative)
According to a page I found on the Internet, "D" is 642.5m long. But point taken, still big though. I don't know if that would have been profitable to build well.
The quote in the article:
"I don't want to be the guy that approved this and then it's a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever."
Nothing in Vegas stays forever. It's usually demolished to make way for the next thing, it doesn't matter if the building is steeped in history, if it's not profitable enough, it goes.