back to article What should a sci-fi spaceship REALLY look like?

People making sci-fi movies have it easy. If you’re designing alien technology, not even the most determined pedant could claim with any authority to know how a real Imperial TIE fighter might look. tie_fighter The TIE fighter (as imagined by George Lucas). If you’re making a film about war, or journalism, or (especially …

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Also ...

      Mummie Tardis has is a fully functional AI that isn't insane. She's fun, curious and adventurous. And as well as sometimes taking you places where you DO want to go, she sometimes has other ideas.

      Perfect starship. Perfect relationship.

    2. Hardcastle the ancient

      The only two space ships I ever wanted were Anastasia and the Tardis.

    3. Xenobyte

      As far as I know we've never seen the real TARDIS from the outside. We've only seen the part it has sticking into our dimension - which happens to look like a police call box...

    4. TRT Silver badge
      Holmes

      The "real" TARDIS

      In one episode the TARDIS returns to Gallifrey and appears in some sort of "TARDISpark" area. The non-chameleoned TARDIS machines nearby resembled large, grey office cupboards. In fact, knowing the BBC props department, they probably *were* large, grey office cupboards.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        SIDRATS

        Yes, like Sidrats (see The War Games). Tardis's are by default featureless grey boxes. And they are usually stored in a special area on Gallifrey to prevent them from causing pollution of the local Gallifreyan timeline.

    5. TRT Silver badge
      Coat

      Ah yes. The pollution issue was of major concern for Gallifreyans. Unless you had a TARDOTA Priusdonian, of course.

      *gets anorak*

  1. Dave 126 Silver badge

    Starbug wasn't made of metal

    It was made of the "same plastic they make doll's heads from", on account of them always surviving plane crashes intact. (thus making the same point about editors of photojournalism as did season 5 of The Wire).

    One Iain M Banks novel (non Culture) features very long narrow ships, for use through wormholes.

    @ Captain TickTock: Why 'FAIL'? SGI are no longer synonymous with computer graphics as they once were, but there's no reason why their recent HPC boxes can't be used for rendering. However, I don;t think anyone uses Amiga VideoToasters any more (Terminator2, The Abyss, Babylon5)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What, no Captain Kremmen massive space cassette player?

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

    1. LaeMing
      Happy

      I vaguely recall that.

      The landing vehicle was shaped like a cassette and launched from a bay on the top.

    2. Wombling_Free
      Thumb Up

      he had a spaceship?

      I was too busy staring at Carla....

  3. Barney Carroll
    Trollface

    Irrelevance of 'up' and aerodynamism

    I hope nobody calls me out for pedantry on a thread like this, but nearly every flying saucer I've ever seen in film has had to operate in atmosphere.

    As for up and down being irrelevant — as are left, right, back and forth, presumably? Again, I seem to remember relative space being incredibly important in pretty much every sci-fi film I've seen. People don't get into space and go "that X axis was really pissing me off!".

    1. LaeMing
      Happy

      That vertical axis /was/ pissing me off (see an above post). And try as I might, I couldn't get rid of it. So your point more than stands.

  4. PeteT70
    Alien

    ok..

    There have been a few distictive ship designs I can remember not mentioned yet so what the hell...

    Gunstar - The last starfigher..

    Max or whatever you want to call it from flight of the navigator..

    Was battle beyond the stars before or after space raiders, cant remember off hand which one came first but both used the same ships.. both films probably equally as bad but hey ho..

    The ships from elite/frontier are fairly distinctive too..

    1. Medium Dave
      Thumb Up

      This thread is disturbingly E/E2F/FFE free

      Imperial Courier, FTW!

      </sadgit>

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Starfuries FTW.

    I agree: The Starfury design is as hard sci-fi as it gets.

    I bet it could be built today, borrowing one thing or 234 from the Space Shuttle.

    It makes perfect sense, even to use the cockpit portion as an escape pod.

    But its surface controls would have to be borrowed from some other craft, like Helicopters, or more adequately, Harriers, because of the extra means to maneuver it.

    PS. The game Descent was truly 3D. You could move your ship in all 3 directions, and rotate in any axis. It was a nightmare to pilot it. Waterfalls within the game helped with the "up and down" concept a little, to avoid disorientation. I never used all buttons and sliders in my joystick, prior to that game. And they were not enough.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      3D control

      I found Descent really easy to control with keyboard + mouse. I also very quickly learned to turn auto-leveling off and that meant no disorientation.

  6. Asiren
    Happy

    Flight of the Navigator?

    Didn't that ship look like a harmless bubble floating around, and then turn quite a menacing needle-like shape when it needed to go fast?

    Ships that change according to usage. Form fitting function, really.

  7. NogginTheNog
    WTF?

    Up and down in space

    I did have to laugh in Attack Of The Clones when Obi Wan referred to the star system containing the planet Kamino as being located "south of the Rishi Maze"!

    1. Hardcastle the ancient

      What, like doing the Kessel run in under 3 parsecs?

    2. Medium Dave

      No weirder than the Greenwich meridian defining East & West.

      You need *some* sort of reference frame. For our galaxy, "North" is at RA 12h 49m in Coma Berenices, according to the IAU...

    3. majorursa
      Boffin

      Not that strange really. There will be a need for a 3-dimensional grid and since there is no real center to the universe we probably will use Earth, or maybe our Galaxy's black hole as the center and two other galaxies to fix op the 'north' and 'west'. Position in space will probably be given in an angular notation (ascension and declination) + distance from 'center'.

      So 'south of' isn't really that weird.

  8. graeme leggett Silver badge

    Who did?

    those illustrations on 1970s sci-fi novels published by Panther and Sphere.

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      AFAIK

      Chris Foss as mentioned above. Great artist though his genius paradoxically wasn't really in the spaceship design

  9. HMcG
    FAIL

    If anybody knows?

    "Geoffrey Landis is a scientist at the NASA John Glenn Research Center, where he works on Mars missions and on developing advanced concepts and technology for future space missions. Helpfully, he’s also a Nebula and Hugo award-winning sci-fi writer. If anyone knows about this stuff, he does:"

    The important point to take away from this is not that this guy does knows about it, but that currently nobody has the first clue about how to design an intergalactic spaceship. So as far as visual apperance goes, we don't have scooby. Streamlined design may or may not be important, for reasons we don't understand. Likewise 'up' and 'down'. So there is no point in pretending this guy, or anyone else, has a better idea what it should look like.

  10. Tempest8008
    Angel

    Space 1999 anyone?

    The Eagle spacecraft seemed to me to be both functional and practical. I liked the exposed superstructure that allowed multiple add-on modules to be quickly bolted on. There was a central cargo hold, manoeuvring thrusters at each cardinal point and several different marques for different missions.

    In case you're looking for a pic:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/S99-Special_Effects_Team.jpg

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      One of the best

      (if not the best ) designs by Brian Johnson who was also responsible for the Nostromo and the Millennium Falcon. (I think those may have been mentioned.)

  11. Robert E A Harvey

    Does it matter?

    Once you reach the sophistication of 'The Culture' you can make your ships look like anything you want. I'd go for an LMS streamlined pacific and coaches.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Or...

      The explorers. A high-backed Wurlitzer pod.

  12. Nigel 11
    Boffin

    Starship design

    Sub-c starships that work will be the size of coke cans (or smaller), packed with virtual reality and (maybe) hardware for bootstrapping real reality from a comet after arrival. Note: one subjective year in VR equalling tens of thousands of real years is an advantage - the journey is fast enough not to get boring.

    A variant is dumb machinery that bootstraps a big computing substrate and interstellar comms upon arrival. Then you just beam your virtual self to another star system at the speed of light., while also going nowhere at all. You can build a galactic-scale civilisation this way. I like the idea that you press a "send" button and then have to look out of the (virtual) window to find out if you are the copy that stayed at home or the copy that travelled thousands of lightyears.

    Then there's the generation ship the size of a moon, but I have grave doubts that one can keep its inhabitants from destroying their ship in interstellar space, given that the journey will be hundreds of generations long. And if they can invent tech that will look after itself over millennia, they'll surely hit on the VR trick before building a generation ship?

    Super-c starships can be anything you care to imagine, because they're about as likely to exist as time machines (for much the same reasons).

    The best story about time travel (impossibility of) used the idea that the universe has to intervene actively to prevent causality violation and its own unravelling. One side in a war has worked this out, and tempts the other side to get itself destroyed by trying to build a time machine. Too late, they find out that the universe's idea of minimal local intervention is to make the sun explode prematurely. It's a big universe.

  13. Andy Enderby 1
    Happy

    never in the movies .....

    but if it's a vast mothership you're after....... Ian M Banks Cullture, the GSV ships, and the one with the best name IIMHO - So Much For Subtlety

    1. Wombling_Free
      Thumb Up

      Not as good as...

      'No More Mr. Nice Guy'

      or

      'Very Little Gravitas Indeed'

      or

      'Eight Rounds Rapid'

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
        Happy

        Absolutely

        "Very Little Gravitas Indeed" was my personal favourite just because it was a joke at the expense of a 'rival' civilisation that takes itself too seriously, so the Culture's ships decide to name themselves to take the piss.

      2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        @Wombling_Free

        FYI:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_ship_names

        Must be another Culture novel due soon, surely?

  14. SgRock
    Happy

    Sci Fi Props Old School

    Greetings Regies:

    --When I was a lad, I suspended any disbelief months before a movie even came to town. I remember a Japanese Space Oater, The Mysterians, I think, where a man is a metalized rubber suit played a giant alien robot. I would watch and think "Gee, how can those terribly clever Japanese Boffins do this, it is completely believable. What genius."

    --A few years later I remember Harlan Ellison on the Tom Snyder Show, talking about Close Encounters and saying something like "Then a giant chandelier comes down and starts spitting out Pillsbury Dough Boys" What a hoot.

    Best Regards

    Clear Ether

    1. unitron
      Alien

      The Mysterians?

      Was that the one with a bunch of guys in red spacesuits/uniforms and another bunch in the same thing, only yellow?

      Saw the preview at the theater but didn't get to go see it when it got to town.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pegasus????

    I thought this question was answered by the BBC series "Space Odyssey - Voyage To The Planets" where the most realistic design for a spacecraft was used. For those that didn't see it, think 2001, but with a whopping big colision shield on the front instead of a ball.

    http://www.amcsorley.dsl.pipex.com/space_odyssey/pegasus.jpg

    In fact the design was so spot on, that it was practically re-used again in the series "Defying Gravity"

    http://scifiandtvtalk.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/dg60.png

    Suggest you torrent both if you never saw. I thought both were great series.

  16. KrisMac

    Future spacecraft (whether Earthborn or Alien) are unlikely to have ANY standard shape...

    As has been written about in numerous books, the most practical means of construction of a large star-faring vessel which does not bleed the home planet of scarce resources is to hook a few engines onto a hollowed out asteroid...

    ..end result is totally random configuration to account for the variability in shape of the original lump of rock... it could be anything from a flattened disk to an elongated peanut... pure spheres being unlikely unless the original rock was so massive that its internal gravity was strong enough to pull its sides in equally...

    ergo - discussion of 'design' is pointless until we get to the point of selecting a rock...

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Like Phage.

      Rocks are a phase you go through before you invent fields reliable and strong enough to render a hull redundant and build GSVs instead.

    2. Nigel 11
      Thumb Up

      Thistledown / Eon

      And then as your technology advances, you make the inside bigger than the outside. MUCH bigger.

      I wonder if Greg Bear got that idea from Dr. Who? It's like a Tardis, but ... bigger.

  17. Saucerhead Tharpe

    I once had to show Harlan Ellison around Glasgow

    He seemed amazed by a simple act of human kindness, like an optician (and a pricey high level one at the time) fixing his glasses, giving him spare screws and not charging him a penny

    His mate Norman Spinrad was slightly nicer, if more easily confused

  18. Eponymous Howard
    Alien

    To long a thread to read all now...

    ....but it has been made clear that the coolest fuckin' alien ship ever, no exceptions, is the Shadow ship from Babylon 5, hasn't it?

    Just checking.

  19. Medium Dave
    Thumb Up

    Finally...

    ...a subject that allows El Reg Commentards to get their war on, but that doesn't involve Apple, MS or Linux. :D

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Well....

    When you have enough resources and technology to create something like the Death Star, shape is irrelevant. Might be good to adhere to a few functional designs but honestly, it doesn't matter that much.

    And I don't care about this subject since no one will ever reach near-light traveling speed anytime soon. I am more interested in the Higgs Boson right now. Much more relevant and achievable.

    Paris: because for her shape is less important than speed...

  21. Andy Neale
    Happy

    Best line of the piece...

    "..the Daleks went with a pleasingly retro saucer/conservatory hybrid..." *Splutters tea*

  22. Chris Beach

    Spherical

    I always thought that a space only fighter (i.e. just does dog fights in space) would be more spherical than any other shape. After all, just as 'up' is pretty irrelevant in space, so is 'forward'.

    You'd want an even 360deg propulsion, and weapon arcs, after all, why would you want to waste time doing a Immelmann to face the bad guy?

    Not sure how you'd control it though...wouldn't be a joystick for sure...

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can't believe...

    ...that Battle Beyond the Stars came up and no-one mentioned the fact that Nell, the hero-protagonist spaceship design, has breasts.

  24. Spoonsinger
    Alien

    Wasp coloured spaceship on cover of

    IGB's "Clear Air Turbulence" album is the best designed craft.

  25. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    I hate* to be pedantic, however...

    "It seemed reasonable to Georges Méliès in 1902 that we could fire men to the Moon inside a huge artillery shell"

    Possibly, it seemed reasonable because Jules Verne had come up with the idea in 'From the Earth to the Moon' 37 years earlier?

    *love

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