Top 10 Spaceships - According to Me
So, I was perusing some of the cooler sides of Science Fiction and thought to myself, hey, why not try to compile a list of the Top 10 coolest spaceships I've ever seen/read about. The rules were simple: They must not be located on a planetary body, or be able to free themselves from a planetary body, they must not be "alive", as it were (thought Artificial Intelligence is allowed...), and they must exist in the realm of science fiction.
Well, I hope you all enjoy, and I would LOVE it if you'd all reciprocate and let me know YOUR top 10 lists. Hopefully from all the cross-posts, we can get some good ideas for more sci-fi to get our miffers into.
Without further ado, starting from the bottom...
10 - Titan A.E. from the animated film Titan A.E.
The Titan A.E. has the indescribably fascinating ability to create a planet from nothing. It takes all the matter surrounding it, in a similar fashion to the "Coalescing of the Universe Post-Big-Bang" theory out there, and condenses it into a planetary shape extremely rapidly. Judging by the pace of the film and making a few inferrences, an entire planet with an active ecosystem emerges in a period of only a few months, tops.
While very similar to the Genesis Device from Star Trek, I couldn't quite go so far as to call the Device a "Starship" per sey. So we'll have to go with a fabulous ship from a pretty good movie and leave it at that. The planet-maker!
===========================================================================
9 - Space Ball One from the film Spaceballs
If you have seen Space Balls, you can probably imagine why I added it to the list. Not only does it make a mockery of an Imperial Star Destroyer when it comes to opening sequence shots (at least in dimensions...), it also has the interesting ability to transform into... MEGA MAID!
Mega Maid (we will continue to lump it together with Space Ball One) was designed to suck the air from the planet Druidia, and pulls it all into Mega Maid's vacuum cleaner. All in all good fun, it has a setting for "Ludicrous Speed", and moonlights as a transformer. What more cool do you want?
===========================================================================
8 - Destroyer Spacecraft from the film Independence Day
As large as entire cities, and single-handedly being responsible for one of the most memorable special effects sequences of the last 20 years, these frisbee-shaped destroyer craft lay waste to the planet Earth's major cities in a matter of seconds. Blowing the White House into matchwood was a matter of milliseconds, with the rest of DC ending up in flames minutes thereafter.
While not the most original in concept (The Day the Earth Stood Still had flying saucers and Star Trek had shields...) the overall appearence and just "mean-looking-ness" of these ships is irrefutable. I thought they were terrifying when I first saw the movie, and to this day, I have to let a small whistle escape when I see them. Very cool ships, indeed.
===========================================================================
7 - Firefly-class transport Serenity from the TV series Firefly
If ever a ship was a character on a show just as much as any of the principle cast, it's in Firefly or its culminating film Serenity. The ship is always a central character, truly feeling like the umbilical keeping them all alive. Every sequence inside the Serenity feels like the ship could actually be hurt or wounded and have to limp its way to victory.
Other shows sort of water down the harsh nature of space. The Enterprise or the Millenium Falcon just fly around like it's nothing. Infinite fuel, infinite air, infinite supplies. No problem. Serenity is so much more real than that. It's a real ship that breaks and has problems and, if it does not function correctly, could spell doom for its inhabitants.
Not mentioning, of course, that the ship is beautifully and logically designed. No endless corridors and rooms and hallways and common areas. This ship is purpose built, section by section, to do its job and do it efficiently. Its beauty in design alone nails it into the #7 slot.
===========================================================================
6 - Heart of Gold from the novel and film Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Infinite Improbibility Drive has to be one of the most bone-headed inventions ever...but damn is it cool. Activating the drive could take you anywhere in the universe in an instant, though the probability of you getting there the way you expect is...quite improbable (hence, the drive's name).
In Zaphod Beeblebrox's bid to find the mythical planet of Magrathea leads to a culminating revelation to the insight of the universe as the potted petunias that had (most improbably...) spontaneously appeared in the sky. All in all a very very cool ship. Especially if you are planning to kidnap...yourself...
===========================================================================
5 - The Death Star from the epic film series Star Wars
Even if the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force, it's still a nifty tool to have. With a single blast, the Death Star can wipe out an entire Mon Calamari Star Cruiser or the entire planet of Alderaan. Equiped with a massive hyperdrive and its equally large superlaser system, this mobile fortress comes ready to blow away anything in its path.
It did have its faults, like having a small thermal exhaust port into which a single proton torpedo can destroy the whole thing. Or having large chasms dropping thousands of feet into which evil emperors can be thrown. But let's be honest...that just makes it cooler!!
===========================================================================
4 - The Beast Planet from the TV series War Planets
If blowing up an entire planet is cool...this thing EATS them. Coming into a star system of choice, the Beast Planet simply consumes other planets whole without even thinking. Whether or not the planet is actually a "planet" or a "hugely large machine" is somewhat debateable, but as I have yet to hear of any real planets that can unhinge themselves at the equator and devour another world, I'm going to go with its some kind of fantastic machine.
Truly an epic 3d generated TV show, The Cluster's fight for survival captivated me as a child watching this obscure show. I'm in the process of trying to track down this series in some playable format just to reminisce on the good times curled up in front of the TV on Saturday mornings. Had a good theme song too...
So yea, it eats planets. How can you argue with that coolness?
===========================================================================
3 - Dyson Sphere from astrophysicist theories and the TV show Star Trek
Everyone knows how valuable renewable energy sources are. Many also know how much solar energy is LOST as it radiates out into the heavens of our solar system. How would it be possible to capture ALL of that energy and convert it into an infinite power source?
Astrophysicists have theorized the construction of such an undertaking, building an entire shell around a star, its radius equal to a habitable planet's orbit from said star, and being able to capture all of the radiant energy given off by that star. Of course, until the star becomes unstable, that is.
When the Enterprise stumbled on this mamoth construct, I was fascinated from the get-go. My mind started racing, thinking of how they would construct it, a sphere enclosing a star. Very cool, indeed.
===========================================================================
2 - Rama from the book Rendezvous with Rama
A mysterious visitor is detected moving rapidly toward the Earth. An asteroid? It doesn't appear to be tumbling end over end...and as it gets closer, we get pictures of a 40-kilometer long cylinder spinning rapidly and hurtling through our solar system toward perihelion with our sun.
The ORIGINAL "mysterious visitor to our solar system" story, and the clear inspiration for the Probe from Star Trek IV, Rama is still giving readers chills as to its mysterious origin. Once inside, the Earth astronauts find an entire world arrayed on the interior surface, both alien and fantastic. Powered by a non-Newtonian propulsion system (requiring no action/reaction laws) capable of accelerating it to a "significant fraction of the speed of light" and getting fuel by pulling matter direction from the sun's corona, this is one cool spacecraft.
Leaving the solar system just as mysteriously as it arrived, the book leaves you awestruck and full of imagination about this magnificent craft. Truly an inspired craft to write about, my hat is off to Arthur C. Clarke.
And, finally...
===========================================================================
1 - Halo Ring from the videogame Halo
NOT ONLY was it built by a superintelligent, for-all-we-know-extinct race calling themselves the Forerunners.
NOT ONLY is it a massive ring of habitatable atmosphere of unimaginable proportions
NOT ONLY are they scattered all around the known universe, and most likely beyond
...did I mention they can wipe all sentient life clean in the entire universe? Once the rings activate, they annihilate intelligent life in the unverse and let it start all over again, clean, fresh. Forget Death Stars, forget Beast Planets, let's just wipe it all out at once and be done with it. How can you argue with that kind of coolness?
I wonder if the rings were activated at some point in the past, responsible for destroying the Forerunner civilization. We may never know.
But this is DEFINITELY the coolest space contraption I've ever read or seen or played. It's freaking cool.
NOTEABLE ENTRIES:
- Axiom from the animated film WALL-E - The ability to hold all of Earth's population in comfort and luxury was appealing...but ultimately not as cool as the others on this list.
- USS Enterprise from the TV series Star Trek - While kind of cool in the same way Serenity is cool, it just did not resonate as well as some of the others did. To be honest, if Star Trek had picked some different kind of ship as its main ship, I get the feeling that, not knowing about the Enterprise it would've been just as cool. Serenity is just so unique and characterized it's irreplaceable. So I felt, anyway...
- USS Cygnus from the film The Black Hole - I will admit, I had some struggles to NOT include this one in the main top-10. This ship is undeniably very cool. Not only being cool in its design and appearence, but having those grand corridors, elaborate transport system, an army of sentient robots at your disposal, massive power generators, the ability to project gravity enough to sit comfortable on the event horizon of a black hole...pretty cool. Probably #11 cool...but not top 10.
- VGER from the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture - A craft purpose-built to return the Voyager Space Probe to its Earth home, and equiping it with the intelligence to pronounce doom on the planet if its creator did not step forward, is pretty cool. As is the elaborate construction of the ship itself. Not to mention its security systems (no doubt influential in the Lost island's design...) and sheer massive size. But beyond the way it looks...how cool is it? Well, it's cool...cool enough for a "noteable entry"
- NSEA Protector from the film Galaxy Quest - A quirky parody of the Enterprise is was imaginatively thought through. Immensely sweet-looking and having features straight out of children's imaginations, including the Omega-13 device that allows you to travel 13 seconds into the past...this ship's pretty cool. Pretty cool...
- Gunstar from the film The Last Starfighter - The gunstars were truly a staple of my childhood. Had they made a toy for it when I was at that age that boys like playing with such things, I would've begged my parents for one. Such a fantastic and thought-out design for a two-man operation, and equiped with the ultra-cool "Death Blossom" last resort attack, this bad-boy was ready to take on the whole Ko-Dan Armada. And did!
- The Mothership from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Communicating with aliens via lights and sounds is positively brilliant. And if you've been the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia, you have seen the actual film model the use, and can appreciate the detail that went into it. The communicating of the species was fascinating, and the film was very good, making the ship very cool. Not quite cool enough though.
Please repost this with YOUR top 10, I'd love to read it!!
-Daniel
Well, I hope you all enjoy, and I would LOVE it if you'd all reciprocate and let me know YOUR top 10 lists. Hopefully from all the cross-posts, we can get some good ideas for more sci-fi to get our miffers into.
Without further ado, starting from the bottom...
10 - Titan A.E. from the animated film Titan A.E.
The Titan A.E. has the indescribably fascinating ability to create a planet from nothing. It takes all the matter surrounding it, in a similar fashion to the "Coalescing of the Universe Post-Big-Bang" theory out there, and condenses it into a planetary shape extremely rapidly. Judging by the pace of the film and making a few inferrences, an entire planet with an active ecosystem emerges in a period of only a few months, tops.
While very similar to the Genesis Device from Star Trek, I couldn't quite go so far as to call the Device a "Starship" per sey. So we'll have to go with a fabulous ship from a pretty good movie and leave it at that. The planet-maker!
===========================================================================
9 - Space Ball One from the film Spaceballs
If you have seen Space Balls, you can probably imagine why I added it to the list. Not only does it make a mockery of an Imperial Star Destroyer when it comes to opening sequence shots (at least in dimensions...), it also has the interesting ability to transform into... MEGA MAID!
Mega Maid (we will continue to lump it together with Space Ball One) was designed to suck the air from the planet Druidia, and pulls it all into Mega Maid's vacuum cleaner. All in all good fun, it has a setting for "Ludicrous Speed", and moonlights as a transformer. What more cool do you want?
===========================================================================
8 - Destroyer Spacecraft from the film Independence Day
As large as entire cities, and single-handedly being responsible for one of the most memorable special effects sequences of the last 20 years, these frisbee-shaped destroyer craft lay waste to the planet Earth's major cities in a matter of seconds. Blowing the White House into matchwood was a matter of milliseconds, with the rest of DC ending up in flames minutes thereafter.
While not the most original in concept (The Day the Earth Stood Still had flying saucers and Star Trek had shields...) the overall appearence and just "mean-looking-ness" of these ships is irrefutable. I thought they were terrifying when I first saw the movie, and to this day, I have to let a small whistle escape when I see them. Very cool ships, indeed.
===========================================================================
7 - Firefly-class transport Serenity from the TV series Firefly
If ever a ship was a character on a show just as much as any of the principle cast, it's in Firefly or its culminating film Serenity. The ship is always a central character, truly feeling like the umbilical keeping them all alive. Every sequence inside the Serenity feels like the ship could actually be hurt or wounded and have to limp its way to victory.
Other shows sort of water down the harsh nature of space. The Enterprise or the Millenium Falcon just fly around like it's nothing. Infinite fuel, infinite air, infinite supplies. No problem. Serenity is so much more real than that. It's a real ship that breaks and has problems and, if it does not function correctly, could spell doom for its inhabitants.
Not mentioning, of course, that the ship is beautifully and logically designed. No endless corridors and rooms and hallways and common areas. This ship is purpose built, section by section, to do its job and do it efficiently. Its beauty in design alone nails it into the #7 slot.
===========================================================================
6 - Heart of Gold from the novel and film Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Infinite Improbibility Drive has to be one of the most bone-headed inventions ever...but damn is it cool. Activating the drive could take you anywhere in the universe in an instant, though the probability of you getting there the way you expect is...quite improbable (hence, the drive's name).
In Zaphod Beeblebrox's bid to find the mythical planet of Magrathea leads to a culminating revelation to the insight of the universe as the potted petunias that had (most improbably...) spontaneously appeared in the sky. All in all a very very cool ship. Especially if you are planning to kidnap...yourself...
===========================================================================
5 - The Death Star from the epic film series Star Wars
Even if the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force, it's still a nifty tool to have. With a single blast, the Death Star can wipe out an entire Mon Calamari Star Cruiser or the entire planet of Alderaan. Equiped with a massive hyperdrive and its equally large superlaser system, this mobile fortress comes ready to blow away anything in its path.
It did have its faults, like having a small thermal exhaust port into which a single proton torpedo can destroy the whole thing. Or having large chasms dropping thousands of feet into which evil emperors can be thrown. But let's be honest...that just makes it cooler!!
===========================================================================
4 - The Beast Planet from the TV series War Planets
If blowing up an entire planet is cool...this thing EATS them. Coming into a star system of choice, the Beast Planet simply consumes other planets whole without even thinking. Whether or not the planet is actually a "planet" or a "hugely large machine" is somewhat debateable, but as I have yet to hear of any real planets that can unhinge themselves at the equator and devour another world, I'm going to go with its some kind of fantastic machine.
Truly an epic 3d generated TV show, The Cluster's fight for survival captivated me as a child watching this obscure show. I'm in the process of trying to track down this series in some playable format just to reminisce on the good times curled up in front of the TV on Saturday mornings. Had a good theme song too...
So yea, it eats planets. How can you argue with that coolness?
===========================================================================
3 - Dyson Sphere from astrophysicist theories and the TV show Star Trek
Everyone knows how valuable renewable energy sources are. Many also know how much solar energy is LOST as it radiates out into the heavens of our solar system. How would it be possible to capture ALL of that energy and convert it into an infinite power source?
Astrophysicists have theorized the construction of such an undertaking, building an entire shell around a star, its radius equal to a habitable planet's orbit from said star, and being able to capture all of the radiant energy given off by that star. Of course, until the star becomes unstable, that is.
When the Enterprise stumbled on this mamoth construct, I was fascinated from the get-go. My mind started racing, thinking of how they would construct it, a sphere enclosing a star. Very cool, indeed.
===========================================================================
2 - Rama from the book Rendezvous with Rama
A mysterious visitor is detected moving rapidly toward the Earth. An asteroid? It doesn't appear to be tumbling end over end...and as it gets closer, we get pictures of a 40-kilometer long cylinder spinning rapidly and hurtling through our solar system toward perihelion with our sun.
The ORIGINAL "mysterious visitor to our solar system" story, and the clear inspiration for the Probe from Star Trek IV, Rama is still giving readers chills as to its mysterious origin. Once inside, the Earth astronauts find an entire world arrayed on the interior surface, both alien and fantastic. Powered by a non-Newtonian propulsion system (requiring no action/reaction laws) capable of accelerating it to a "significant fraction of the speed of light" and getting fuel by pulling matter direction from the sun's corona, this is one cool spacecraft.
Leaving the solar system just as mysteriously as it arrived, the book leaves you awestruck and full of imagination about this magnificent craft. Truly an inspired craft to write about, my hat is off to Arthur C. Clarke.
And, finally...
===========================================================================
1 - Halo Ring from the videogame Halo
NOT ONLY was it built by a superintelligent, for-all-we-know-extinct race calling themselves the Forerunners.
NOT ONLY is it a massive ring of habitatable atmosphere of unimaginable proportions
NOT ONLY are they scattered all around the known universe, and most likely beyond
...did I mention they can wipe all sentient life clean in the entire universe? Once the rings activate, they annihilate intelligent life in the unverse and let it start all over again, clean, fresh. Forget Death Stars, forget Beast Planets, let's just wipe it all out at once and be done with it. How can you argue with that kind of coolness?
I wonder if the rings were activated at some point in the past, responsible for destroying the Forerunner civilization. We may never know.
But this is DEFINITELY the coolest space contraption I've ever read or seen or played. It's freaking cool.
NOTEABLE ENTRIES:
- Axiom from the animated film WALL-E - The ability to hold all of Earth's population in comfort and luxury was appealing...but ultimately not as cool as the others on this list.
- USS Enterprise from the TV series Star Trek - While kind of cool in the same way Serenity is cool, it just did not resonate as well as some of the others did. To be honest, if Star Trek had picked some different kind of ship as its main ship, I get the feeling that, not knowing about the Enterprise it would've been just as cool. Serenity is just so unique and characterized it's irreplaceable. So I felt, anyway...
- USS Cygnus from the film The Black Hole - I will admit, I had some struggles to NOT include this one in the main top-10. This ship is undeniably very cool. Not only being cool in its design and appearence, but having those grand corridors, elaborate transport system, an army of sentient robots at your disposal, massive power generators, the ability to project gravity enough to sit comfortable on the event horizon of a black hole...pretty cool. Probably #11 cool...but not top 10.
- VGER from the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture - A craft purpose-built to return the Voyager Space Probe to its Earth home, and equiping it with the intelligence to pronounce doom on the planet if its creator did not step forward, is pretty cool. As is the elaborate construction of the ship itself. Not to mention its security systems (no doubt influential in the Lost island's design...) and sheer massive size. But beyond the way it looks...how cool is it? Well, it's cool...cool enough for a "noteable entry"
- NSEA Protector from the film Galaxy Quest - A quirky parody of the Enterprise is was imaginatively thought through. Immensely sweet-looking and having features straight out of children's imaginations, including the Omega-13 device that allows you to travel 13 seconds into the past...this ship's pretty cool. Pretty cool...
- Gunstar from the film The Last Starfighter - The gunstars were truly a staple of my childhood. Had they made a toy for it when I was at that age that boys like playing with such things, I would've begged my parents for one. Such a fantastic and thought-out design for a two-man operation, and equiped with the ultra-cool "Death Blossom" last resort attack, this bad-boy was ready to take on the whole Ko-Dan Armada. And did!
- The Mothership from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Communicating with aliens via lights and sounds is positively brilliant. And if you've been the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia, you have seen the actual film model the use, and can appreciate the detail that went into it. The communicating of the species was fascinating, and the film was very good, making the ship very cool. Not quite cool enough though.
Please repost this with YOUR top 10, I'd love to read it!!
-Daniel