Can We Build a Starship Enterprise in the Next 10 Years?

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Robert Frost, engineer and instructor at NASA:

No. Not only could we not build this in 10 years, but we couldn't even build this in 10 years.

Let's ignore the technologies that might be impossible (e.g., warp drive, dilithium crystals, and transporters). Let's ignore the technologies that we have no idea how to reproduce in a similar way (artificial gravity). Let's just focus on trying to build a space-worthy scale replica of the USS Enterprise that uses existing structural and propulsion capabilities.

The Starship Enterprise is much more massive than the International Space Station. Here's a comparison of their respective sizes. (Note that I've used the original Enterprise, not the Abrams version, which is considerably larger.)