Though some aspects of the Enterprise are far out of reach today, many are within our grasp, and some are part of our daily lives. Sliding doors, futuristic in the 1960s, now welcome almost every grocery store visitor, and today's flip-open cellphones resemble Star Trek's tricorders. The touch-screen devices ubiquitous today even look like those used in the 1990s episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
"If you had shown someone an iPad in the 1990s and told them it was 23rd century technology, they would have believed you," Richard Obousy, co-founder and president of Icarus Interstellar Inc., told SPACE.com.
Advances with 3D printers also provide opportunities for voyages through space, allowing the replication of parts while using materials found at the destination. Andreas Hein, an aerospace engineer also with Icarus Interstellar, suggested that it might not be long before such printers make food similar to the way meals were synthesized by replicators on the Enterprise.
Additionally, engineers working at NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, informally known as Eagleworks, are working on a Q-thruster that bears a striking resemblance to the impulse engines on the Enterprise.