Most beautiful spaceships in fiction

Cowabungaa

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veloper said:
Elegant, convex, simple and probably smooth as well, is what we should be looking for here.
You should read Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora then. It's one of the most down-to-earth (hah, ironic) takes on interstellar exploration in literature to date.
 

Chris Moses

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renegade7 said:
From EVE Online, the Maelstrom:



I almost decided on the Hurricane, but there were two reasons I picked the Maelstrom instead:

-Biggest subcap is best subcap (The Maelstrom is about 1300 meters in length on its long axis and the only larger subcap, the Machariel, literally looks like a piece of poo)

-The sound of eight 1400MM cannons on a high-fidelity surround sound system. Seriously, CCP has really done a good job in the last few years of improving the audio.

The Maelstrom also has a special sentimental place to me. One of the first times I undocked from my starter station in my tiny little Reaper frigate (about 30 meters in length) I was right next to one of these going only slightly faster, and flying right next to it and turning the camera towards it the Maelstrom filled up the entire screen for almost the entire 20 or so seconds it took me to fly past it. That tiny green mark I made on the picture represents the size difference. It was just epic.

And to round out the sense of scale, if you were to take a picture of a Titan at the resolution of that picture and draw an only slightly-larger line, you would have a fair representation of the difference in size between a battleship like the Maelstrom and a Titan.
Ah, yes, the Maelstrom. One of my favorite ships as well. It was the first battleship I bought. Just seeing that picture brings back a lot of fond memories...
 

BloodRed Pixel

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AccursedTheory said:
Hawki said:
-Daedalus-class warship (Stargate)
Nice to see someone else giving Stargate starships some love.



I also like how they designed the Earth ships in general in the Stargate series. Their obviously human in design, but you can definitely see the influence on the basic construction that Terra's one true interstellar bro, the Asgard, gave them.

And while the Daedalus is the better looking of the two earth warship classes, the Prometheus was a looker too.

Oh yes, the flying cock and balls of steel. Truly one of THE achievements in space ship design!
:D
 

DefunctTheory

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BloodRed Pixel said:
AccursedTheory said:
Hawki said:
-Daedalus-class warship (Stargate)
Nice to see someone else giving Stargate starships some love.



I also like how they designed the Earth ships in general in the Stargate series. Their obviously human in design, but you can definitely see the influence on the basic construction that Terra's one true interstellar bro, the Asgard, gave them.

And while the Daedalus is the better looking of the two earth warship classes, the Prometheus was a looker too.


Oh yes, the flying cock and balls of steel. Truly one of THE achievements in space ship design!
:D
Helmsman, set a collision course for that Goa'uld mothership! Communications officer, broadcast Barry White on all frequencies!
 

veloper

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Cowabungaa said:
veloper said:
Elegant, convex, simple and probably smooth as well, is what we should be looking for here.
You should read Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora then. It's one of the most down-to-earth (hah, ironic) takes on interstellar exploration in literature to date.
OK I'll check it out. Thanks!
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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Jadwick said:
I know rule of cool usually takes effect for fictional spacecraft, but I have a problem with believing any ship that was designed solely for space flight would look like anything other than a big rectangle - or have those large rotating rings to produce an effect similar to that of gravity.

There is no friction in space, we don't need all those swooping lines unless we are designing a craft for atmospheric flight. Rectangles and squares are therefore the most efficient usage of interior space.
Think Borg ships from TNG.

More likely we would want to produce a gravity like effect, the easiest way would be to rotate the ship which would then act like a centrifuge allowing people to walk on the interior of the outside edge.


See also: The Martian's Hermes
Every space station in Elite



Sorry people but true beauty is in practicality.
Most of the angular, curved, and more aerodynamic looking ships actually are capable of a degree of atmospheric flight. For warships it's also a good way of reducing a combat vehicle's exposed profile, which would make a craft harder to hit, especially considering how we currently design tanks. Tanks have a low sloped profile, that makes them harder to hit, it's also a consideration we're starting to see applied to naval ships and fighter craft. Lower profiles are harder to detect and engage.

Also there actually is friction in space, there isn't any atmospheric pressure, but there's plenty of matter, anything moving through space comes into contact with that matter, thus also experiences friction. It's not a lot of friction, but the faster you go, the more effect it has on the ship. There are also things like solar winds to consider, something a large rectangular, or cube shaped ship would have to deal with much more than a ship with less drag.

Then we hit the physics, any large rectangular, or cube shaped ship would require a lot of internal structural support, because such shapes aren't very strong. The ship not only has to prevent itself from collapsing, but also from flying apart under centrifugal and tidal forces. Any square, cube, or rectangle shaped ship will require an excessive amount of support, to the detriment of it's internal usable space. Where curved, cylindrical, spherical, triangular, and other angular structures are far more supportive, they'd require much less internal support, as the frame will take stress much more efficiently. Spheres though only get that to limited extent though, a hollow sphere has even more surface area than a rectangle for centrifugal and tidal forces to effect. So spheres would be limited to a rather small size ship, or module.

Torus rings are great as a method of generating artificial gravity through centrifugal force, the larger the ring, the slower it needs to spin to achieve a livable gravity. The problem is that they're massively space and material inefficient, as are spheres that do the same thing. For a small scale living environment, like a transit hub space station, they're a workable solution, as you'd have a small population on the station, compared to other sections of usable space, most of which would have low gravity. Spacers don't need constant exposure to simulated 1G either, just enough exposure on a regular basis to prevent muscle atrophy. So for a ship having the crew quarters in a rotating drum would be a much more efficient use of space, pair that with the fact that being able to exploit Zero-G in other portions of the ship would be very useful. For a space colony, a cylinder is the only truly efficient solution, as it can spin to create artificial gravity over a huge surface area, while containing a huge amount of atmosphere. So much atmosphere in fact, you wouldn't really need CO2 scrubbers, just sufficient amount of plants and algae to recycle the CO2 into O2.

So the utilitarian ships you talk about, really don't have that much utility, they're too inefficient.
 

KaraFang

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Oh, come on people...

Humanity, when it goes into space, will design ships that still have beauty to them... because we love beauty in the things we design.

In the UK, there is something called Brutalist architecture - all concrete, glass and pretty much boxes with a few other angles shoved in. barely anyone in the UK likes them, most of us want them torn down or redesigned and covered with...well, anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture.

Maybe in the very beginning of actual futuristic space travel we'll be very brutalist and functional in design for necessity, but considering stuff even NASA has designed has an odd "artistic" feel despite being functional, I feel eventually we will make them beautiful.

For me:

Enterprise E (Star Trek)- a swan in space, formed out of gorgeous pewter metal, armed to the teeth... stunning and powerful.
GTVA Collossus (Freespace 2)- huge, bulky, kinda "functional" and yet has... beauty to it.
Destiny (Stargate series) - lovely design.
Pride of Higara (homeworld 2) - lovely, enough said.
Excalibur (Babylon 5 universe) Terran, Mimbari and Vorlon tech fused into one hell of a dreadnought.
 

kris40k

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renegade7 said:
From EVE Online, the Maelstrom:



I almost decided on the Hurricane, but there were two reasons I picked the Maelstrom instead:

-Biggest subcap is best subcap (The Maelstrom is about 1300 meters in length on its long axis and the only larger subcap, the Machariel, literally looks like a piece of poo)

-The sound of eight 1400MM cannons on a high-fidelity surround sound system. Seriously, CCP has really done a good job in the last few years of improving the audio.

The Maelstrom also has a special sentimental place to me. One of the first times I undocked from my starter station in my tiny little Reaper frigate (about 30 meters in length) I was right next to one of these going only slightly faster, and flying right next to it and turning the camera towards it the Maelstrom filled up the entire screen for almost the entire 20 or so seconds it took me to fly past it. That tiny green mark I made on the picture represents the size difference. It was just epic.

And to round out the sense of scale, if you were to take a picture of a Titan at the resolution of that picture and draw an only slightly-larger line, you would have a fair representation of the difference in size between a battleship like the Maelstrom and a Titan.

Matari trash made by sinners and the dregs of humanity.

My favorite, the Legion, looks like garbage in my configuration of choice, so I'll post the Damnation, my other ride.



And I kid about the Matari ship, although I think the Hurricane would have been a better choice.

You know, if you had to pick a ship made up of rusted girders and ducktape.
 

Laughing Man

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Well the old favourites of course being Enterprise D and E (E took a bit to grow on me.)

A few of my favs from Stargate

The Puddle Jumper and Daedalus


The Asgard ships


Shame on everyone in this topic that not one of you has posted an image of

 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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There are a lot of really humble ships getting a lot of love, so I'll add some extra humble Elite: Dangerous love


It's a jack of all trades, good for just about everything, plus it's the smallest and cheapest ship that can mount a Class 2 Mining Laser.


The smallest and cheapest of the dedicated freighters in Elite: Dangerous, it sports a single small hardpoint and generally meh stats all around. It's got a great cargo abilities, but the strange part is... It's got a phenomenal jump range for it's size, making it a favorite of explorers, due the range paired with it's low overhead and upkeep costs.


This simple little ship is the first ship of all Elite: Dangerous commanders. It's simple, small, not much to look at, dirt cheap, poorly performing, and totally without pretension. Still don't let this little ship fool you, it's weaknesses are also it's strengths... I once saw one take down an Anaconda, just by laying chase in the Anaconda's blind spot and shooting it's little heart out for a half an hour. It's just an all around useful little ship that, if you need to get you somewhere, it'll get you there, not quickly, but you'll get there in one.
 
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Jadwick said:
More likely we would want to produce a gravity like effect, the easiest way would be to rotate the ship which would then act like a centrifuge allowing people to walk on the interior of the outside edge.
That works fine if your ship is still, but more likely than not you're going to be under some form of acceleration for most of your journey. The ideal arrangement in that situation is making the ship like a tower, with the engines beneath you. If you're accelerating while you have the spinning rings, gravity is going to diagonal to the ring, not towards the outside
 

talker

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I understand it's not exactly a pretty vessel, but in the interest of not parroting anyone else I'm gonna go with a ship that may surprise people.

The Red Dwarf is, to my mind, one of the best fictional spaceships, simply because it actually looks like a spaceship instead of some kind of upper-atmosphere airplane. It's not aerodynamic, it's a mining vessel built by launching components into orbit and welding them together. No curves and gleaming plates, the exterior is blocky, with all kinds of mining equipment fitted onto the side and a smegging meteorite embedded in the side. It's by no means beautiful, but it is aesthetically fitting.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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The Almighty Aardvark said:
Jadwick said:
More likely we would want to produce a gravity like effect, the easiest way would be to rotate the ship which would then act like a centrifuge allowing people to walk on the interior of the outside edge.
That works fine if your ship is still, but more likely than not you're going to be under some form of acceleration for most of your journey. The ideal arrangement in that situation is making the ship like a tower, with the engines beneath you. If you're accelerating while you have the spinning rings, gravity is going to diagonal to the ring, not towards the outside
Remember that a moving ship is not always under noticeable acceleration, it'd be too much of a demand on fuel. On a manned craft you have most of the space dedicated to crew quarters, not fuel, so most of the trip would be done on momentum alone. At which point, since the ship and everything on it has the same momentum going in the same direction, spinning rings would be a good long term solution. It'd also impart rotation to the ship which would have the added benefit of stabilizing it's course.

talker said:
I understand it's not exactly a pretty vessel, but in the interest of not parroting anyone else I'm gonna go with a ship that may surprise people.

The Red Dwarf is, to my mind, one of the best fictional spaceships, simply because it actually looks like a spaceship instead of some kind of upper-atmosphere airplane. It's not aerodynamic, it's a mining vessel built by launching components into orbit and welding them together. No curves and gleaming plates, the exterior is blocky, with all kinds of mining equipment fitted onto the side and a smegging meteorite embedded in the side. It's by no means beautiful, but it is aesthetically fitting.
The thing with Red Dwarf is that it's a massive deep space mining vessel, the thing by itself is a terrifying waste of resources, as it's the size of a damn space colony. It might be practical for sub-light speed long interstellar mining and refining, but the necessity of such a ship would mean we've already stripped our solar system. Red Dwarf as a miner is a poor concept, it'd be much better as a generation ship to carry colonists to very distant worlds to settle.
 

KaraFang

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
talker said:
I understand it's not exactly a pretty vessel, but in the interest of not parroting anyone else I'm gonna go with a ship that may surprise people.

The Red Dwarf is, to my mind, one of the best fictional spaceships, simply because it actually looks like a spaceship instead of some kind of upper-atmosphere airplane. It's not aerodynamic, it's a mining vessel built by launching components into orbit and welding them together. No curves and gleaming plates, the exterior is blocky, with all kinds of mining equipment fitted onto the side and a smegging meteorite embedded in the side. It's by no means beautiful, but it is aesthetically fitting.
The thing with Red Dwarf is that it's a massive deep space mining vessel, the thing by itself is a terrifying waste of resources, as it's the size of a damn space colony. It might be practical for sub-light speed long interstellar mining and refining, but the necessity of such a ship would mean we've already stripped our solar system. Red Dwarf as a miner is a poor concept, it'd be much better as a generation ship to carry colonists to very distant worlds to settle.
They don't have FTL drive in Red Dwarf, and we have stripped earth and the moon of all resources in their world... the only option was to asteroid and distant planet (jupiter, uranus etc etc) mine.

Red dwarf in this case makes a lot of sense IMO: you need the miners, equipment, and some way of refining and then transporting huge masses of ores and rare minerals across vast distances and the food etc to feed them. IF I recall in the book, wasn't the round trip Lister was on something like a 7 year voyage?

Makes sense it would be that big, same with the Ishimura in Dead Space.

PS - the asteroid in Red Dawrf from a lot of the commentary stuff suggested it was an asteroid they had picked up and were mining while heading back to earth. Before the leak forced Holly to 180 to protect the rest of the solar system from the radiation detonation.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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KaraFang said:
They don't have FTL drive in Red Dwarf, and we have stripped earth and the moon of all resources in their world... the only option was to asteroid and distant planet (jupiter, uranus etc etc) mine.

Red dwarf in this case makes a lot of sense IMO: you need the miners, equipment, and some way of refining and then transporting huge masses of ores and rare minerals across vast distances and the food etc to feed them. IF I recall in the book, wasn't the round trip Lister was on something like a 7 year voyage?

Makes sense it would be that big, same with the Ishimura in Dead Space.

PS - the asteroid in Red Dawrf from a lot of the commentary stuff suggested it was an asteroid they had picked up and were mining while heading back to earth. Before the leak forced Holly to 180 to protect the rest of the solar system from the radiation detonation.
For that purpose it seems ships like the Nostromo would be a lot more efficient and effective. A small ship that tows massive mining and refinery rigs. That way your resource extraction industry isn't tied to a particular ship, but rather just placed where needed, does it's job, gets taken to the next place when ready.
 

KaraFang

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
For that purpose it seems ships like the Nostromo would be a lot more efficient and effective. A small ship that tows massive mining and refinery rigs. That way your resource extraction industry isn't tied to a particular ship, but rather just placed where needed, does it's job, gets taken to the next place when ready.
Was the mining rig the Nostromo towing from a colony? I only ask as in Red Dwarf they need the mining crew to mine the stuff, they don't go big for automation in the red dwarf world for some reason. The bazookoids are mining lasers, designed to be held by humans and stuff. So, if they are doing it this way for "reasons" explains why they need a large crew. I presume that this would indicate that Red Dwarf and the other Jupiter mining corp ships mine in conditions/locations where automation isn't possible and also seems to be asteroid mine as well (or has the ability).

Same for the Ishimura - it mines planets with very small or no human populations and also seemed to have a large crew required to actually do the mining and control/guide the automation.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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KaraFang said:
Was the mining rig the Nostromo towing from a colony? I only ask as in Red Dwarf they need the mining crew to mine the stuff, they don't go big for automation in the red dwarf world for some reason. The bazookoids are mining lasers, designed to be held by humans and stuff. So, if they are doing it this way for "reasons" explains why they need a large crew. I presume that this would indicate that Red Dwarf and the other Jupiter mining corp ships mine in conditions/locations where automation isn't possible and also seems to be asteroid mine as well (or has the ability).

Same for the Ishimura - it mines planets with very small or no human populations and also seemed to have a large crew required to actually do the mining and control/guide the automation.
If I recall correctly the Nostromo was towing a refinery from a mining colony, not the mining rig itself, which is the basis of the necessity actually. Space voyages are long and mining colonies tend to be the foundation for permanent long term settlement of a star system. Unless you're mining on a terrestrial planet, having people do the heavy lifting is a bad idea, it's much better to use remote platforms on asteroids, while very long extraction towers would be better for gas giants.

In the Honorverse mining ships are little more than large garbage scows with impeller drives, generally with small crews, whose sole purpose is asteroid material extraction. They're exclusively intrasystem vessels, having no Alpha nodes in their impeller rings to generate Warshawski sails, they also lack hyper-generators to translate across the alpha wall into hyperspace.

Although I like the democratization of resource extraction in Elite: Dangerous, it's probably the most realistic approach. Small independently owned ships are set up for asteroid extraction, having mining lasers to blast useful resources off meteorites, which then are either collected by the ship, or autonomous mining limpets. Although mining ships need a refinery system aboard, in which it refines raw materials as it goes about mining. But that's reliant on the proliferation of Star ships, where independent commanders take on the burden of equipping ships for their various roles, like mining. It's a very efficient system, raw materials are a bit more costly to obtain, but it prevents large interests having to maintain their own mining fleets.