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To Boldly Go?

Just how practical are selected famous fictional space-ships in a real life situation?

Okay, so today we're looking at the never-debated topic of the feasibility of a number of famous and obscure but deserving sci-fi starships, if we were to be suddenly become the proud owner of such a marvellous instrument. I'm not talking about the technology, whether warp-drive or hyperspace are possible, whether or not you can hear the 'Pew-pew' sound of your lasers in space, or even what's the crack with that teleport gadget.

Instead, I'm taking a more, how can I put this one? ergonomic viewpoint, which not only includes any outstanding design quirks and features, but also the human factor and even in selected cases, things like the social or cultural context in which these ships operate. There will also be a fair bit of what I mistakenly call 'humour' in there too.

But enough preamble from me, let's get on with the rest of this text.

'Nostromo' - Alien Movie.

This one seems to be a fairly practical almost proletarian chariot for interstellar exploration. if you like your retro-future authentically grubby, you can't really fault it. It is suitable for you and a group of friends, as I don't recall a huge crew being needed. It also looks like the sort of ship that can go a long time without too much maintenance being needed.

The BIG problem here, is the shockingly bad choice of ship's pet. Not the cat, but the OTHER one, made out of teeth, claws and drooling. (Are you sure you're definitely not referencing the ship's cat here? - Ed note.) I am of course referring to the vicious Xenomorphic alien, which also lays the 'special' eggs, which are the kind of Easter eggs that you give to very naughty children to play with!

And their damn-fool indulgent parents, who let them get that way too.

So regrettably, in spite of the initial attractiveness, we'll have to give this one a miss.

'The Death Star' - I think you all know where this comes from!

It's a biggie next, the ultimate big one in fact.

In terms of safety, at first glance it would seem to be the best bet of all. The Death Star certainly has presence, with a large shadow for other things to cower in. It is also better than a platinum credit card for getting all the goodies that you want from any planet in the galaxy. "Give me all your stuff or I'll destroy your home world!" sounds a lot more convincing coming from the lucky owner of a Death Star than anything else covered in this article, really.

However there are a number of drawbacks, at least one of them fatal.

The massive size tends to mean that this is not something suitable for you and a few friends. Quite a large crew is required to operate it. We're starting at around 250,000 sentient bodies just to get the thing jumpstarted. That would need more Facebook followers than anyone here has got. (Warm or cold doesn't matter to the Galactic Empire. Now there's a thought, a zombie Death Star crew!) You may recall that it took a galaxy-spanning evil empire of ultimate evilness to build it. Well we're still a long long way from that state of affairs, regardless of what people might think of their respective governments right now.

We also need to talk urgently about unshielded secondary thermal exhaust ports. Provisions should be made against the possibility of target practice from joyriding youths in stolen X-Wing fighters 'using the force' and with long practice in precision attacks from 'bulls eying womp-rats'.

I get the impression that operating a Death Star is perhaps compensating for something else missing, or perhaps not missing but deficient in size, and trying a bit too hard to impress in general? Look, it's not the size that matters, it's how you use it!

So, it appears on further consideration that the Death Star isn't such a good bet.

'Executor' - Cut price Death Star, or even more obviously over the top phallic symbolism?

We are now referring to the next size down from a small moon. This is the thing that looks like a normal star ship, but is vastly oversized. Our example is the 'Executor', the Super Star Destroyer which glides past with majestic menace at around 19 kilometres long.

The first time one of these is taken out for a quick spin around the nearest solar system, here is the conversation that will inevitably happen:

Darth Vader - "We're coming up on the planet Genericon, I'm giving the order to change course to clear the planet."

Captain- "Righty ho your Darthness! Helms-being, steer twenty degrees to port and quick about it!"

Helms-being - "Commencing course change twenty degrees to port, aye Capta.. Erm, Captain, the helm controls aren't responding.."

Captain - "Well use the comm-links to contact Engineering, get them to steer with the engine thrust directly!"

Comms Officer - (A few moments and several increasingly fruitless attempts later) "Ah, Captain, there's nothing doing with these either. Just a slushy hissing noise and no answer."

Captain - "Lord Vader, were the contractors that installed the internal wiring actually Coruscant Telecom certified engineers, as they claimed to be?"

Darth Vader - (With an uncharacteristically defensive tone of voice) "My dear Captain, this is a very very expensive ship, and after the Death Star fiasco, the emperor is all over my arse with cutbacks and budget freezes. We had make economies somewhere!"

Captain - "Well, we'll just have to do this the old school way, send a runner to the engineering control room!"

Helmsbeing - "Sir, I think you've overlooked the distance between the bridge and engineering. It's a little over fourteen kilometres."

Darth Vader - "I've seen the crew bombing up and down the main access corridor on skateboards and a couple of those Segway things, surely we can use one of these?"

Captain - "We're closed up at action stations with all blast doors shut tight, there's one every fifty meters, so we've got to open and close around two hundred and eighty of these to get the message through."

Darth Vader - (Frustrated) "And I suppose the centrally operated door controls are broken as well?!"

Everyone on the bridge - (All shrug helplessly.)

Darth Vader - "Well there is only one thing left to do, I will steer this ship away from danger myself, just by using THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE!"

Helms-being - (Very quietly, to no-one in particular) "If you have issues with scenes of a disturbing nature, look away now. The last time he tried to move anything major with force power, he started off by pissing himself and ended with a massive rectal prolapse!"

'Star Ship Enterprise' - Various iterations of things with 'Trek' in the title.

So we move down a few sizes to a more manageable fantasy transport. The Star Ship Enterprise, or Empire Star Destroyer, if you fancy a more evil vibe, would seem to be a more practical mount than something the size of a small planet.

The main problem with your medium sized to large armed star ship is, whether you are playing for Team Good, or Evil Dynamo Athletic, is that you're part of a smaller whole, a space navy by whatever name. This makes operating the good ship Enterprise too much like a regular job, as you go where others tell you to.

In fact, most of the time you're not much more than middle management with fancy blasters. I bet there's futuristic paperwork involved, the 'Captain's Log' entries were only the tiniest glimpse of that. So a resounding 'no' goes to this one.

'Millennium Falcon' - From a galaxy a long time ago..

Now we're into the ultimate cool ship for aspiring space jockeys. It's small, so much more useable than the bigger ships before. It's fast, very fast, so able to outrun anything that could swallow it whole, and packs enough of a punch to deal with anything that is its own size. It just needs you and a hairy man-dog co-pilot to work it. The Falcon is a classic car with hyperspace capability, a cool chariot for cool kids.

With all of these things in its favour, what could you possibly object to here?

Well the Falcon isn't the newest vessel around here. Any service warranties expired when Tatooine last had a liquid water ocean. In fact the overall look and feel is one of ancient classic car which has been endlessly bodged to keep it alive. When Han Solo asserted that he had made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, he conveniently forgets to mention that it could have been even quicker. Apart from having to stop the Falcon periodically to pick up the bits that had fallen off.

What do half of those randomly placed switches in the cockpit do anyway?

"This little piggy lights up momentarily then goes dark."

"This little piggy breaks off in my hands.."

"This little piggy isn't really attached to anything in the first place'"

"And this little piggy goes 'wee-wee-wee' as the hyperdrive is broken yet again!"

Some people even at this point won't be put off. They like hardware bodging and fixing forever broken stuff. They are addicted to the fumes from soldering irons perhaps? But there is a world of difference between doing a classic car restoration in your favourite shed of a leisurely Sunday afternoon, and not finding a compatible screwdriver for the control panel cover in time, through panic blindness, as an Imperial Star Destroyer hoves into view.

X-Wing and other fighters - Pretty much like the last one, but down a size or so..

One thing even nippier and cooler than the Millennium Falcon is your typical star-fighter. X-Wing, something Galactican, or anything else, these are the high performance racing motorbikes versus the hotrod classic car.

Some limitations are obvious. Once again, you need to be part of a larger whole, with some controls over where you go and what you do when you get there. The atmosphere may well be looser and more easy-going than the strict naval discipline implied with a big ship though. In most cases, your range will be short and you may well be tied to a specific location, unless you're in the 'go anywhere at the drop of a hat' Star Wars universe.

There is a bigger problem and you might become aware of it on the first day of fighter pilot school, when the instructor starts to tell you all about 'relief tubes'. At this point, quite a lot of aspiring rookies suddenly decide that they would prefer to learn how to work a less exciting aircraft, but one with a proper indoor toilet!

It appears though, that the X-Wing designer appears to have presciently created a space behind the cockpit for a porta-potty? Alas, poor R2-D2!

'Heart of Gold' - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

So we're coming up unexpectedly short with a lot of well-loved fictional spacecraft. How about something from the more esoteric end of sci-fi, with the Heart of Gold from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

In its original incarnation, the Heart of Gold was quite an elegant craft, fashioned like a sleek running shoe, according to the author. It isn't apparently difficult to operate, as even something as dumb as Zaphod Beeblebrox can steal it. The clinching bit of kit is, of course the Infinite Improbability Drive. Being able to access every point in space and time simultaneously means that you're never sure where you'll end up or even what species you'll be when you get there. Which could lead to some interesting days out.

A typical short jaunt could well lead to sperm whales and sentient bowls of petunias being generated by the improbability factor. This actually happened, so the sentient anti-cruelty organisation protested outside the offices of the people who invented the drive. This got very tiring, especially for the riot police who had to clean it up and sponge away the aftermath with extreme prejudice.

There are some things that are beyond its ability. The improbability factor of a good demo coming from the Bits Club proved to be infinitely impossible and broke the drive!

The real weak spot is with the Sirius Cybernetics Corp electronics. Apart from the irritation factor of Eddie the shipboard computer, do not EVER connect the Nutrimatic drinks dispenser to the ships main systems in an emergency situation, or a non-emergency situation, come to that. Unless you want to create an emergency situation that wasn't there previously for shits and giggles.

And there is Marvin the paranoid android for a bonus crew member, who just loves being given menial tasks and doesn't like to talk about it.

(Footnote: - The Disaster Area Stuntship)

This ship is not recommended at all. Apart from the appalling control layout. "You press a black button on a black control panel and something lights up in black to tell you that you've done it." The rest of it is somewhat pre- programmed, one way and getting uncomfortably warmer all the time.

The only way out appears to be through a tele porter disguised as a microwave oven, or is it just a microwave oven cunningly disguised as a tele porter?

Not one to want to find out.

And now - The good ships!

So we're done with the first part of this article, where the great at first glance, but not so clever close up space vessels have been considered. Now it's time to talk about a few which might just about manage to make the cut.

Firstly starting off with

'Red Dwarf' - The Jupiter Mining Corp ship and television series.

Red Dwarf is just perfect if you accept that you've lost all directional control. It has hugeness on its side, so no shortage of supplies or places to go to. A lot of adventuring can be had within its hull space, as you're effectively dealing with the aftermath of a microwave oven left on for three million years (with one of Listers reheated take away curries.)

There is an entertainingly dim ships computer, a less entertainingly dim hologram, an evolved cat and a neurotically house proud droid to round up crew numbers.

For those times when you fancy an away-day, there is the indestructible Star- Bug, which seems to be made from the same material as black box flight recorders.

There is minimal need for maintenance and upkeep, as some rather awesome nanobots can effectively reconstruct the entire ship from scratch. Unfortunately that might include the previous crew as well.

Cobra Mk3 trader - Elite and all its derivatives.

It's a big hi there to Commander Jameson and all those inspired to follow in his space booted footsteps, this author included back in the day. A clever switch of media to computer game gives you the chance to try this one hands- on. And yes, it's pretty damn neat.

We've got the good bits of the Millennium Falcon, a ship which can handle itself well among contemporaries and against neer-do-wells. It doesn't have the flakiness of the Falcon and has a logical and easy to follow cockpit, with that awesome three dimensional scanner. It also has a crew of one, so if you're really looking to get away from it all including other people, the Cobra Mk3 is the way to go.

I'd also throw in an honourable mention to the Tiger Trader from Frontier Elite. It's a sort of scaled-up Cobra, needs a few extra people to help, so good with a small circle of trusted friends. The Tiger Trader I had could be turned into a small battleship with multiple upgraded lasers and plenty of shield units. It survived a massive battle with an Imperial Courier and several of his friends. Several of which were eliminated by colliding with the bulk of the Tiger Trader!

'Liberator' - Blakes 7, (with some improvements.)

We ruled out bigger ships earlier on in this article, did we not? It was decided that the crew requirements were too onerous, or required subservient loyalty to a big organisation to fulfil. I think we've found an exception here.

The Liberator was an alien ship, found drifting in space. The hard work of keeping all its systems online and inline was left to the onboard Artificial Intelligence, Zen. So only a small crew is needed otherwise. The sort of numbers that you would operate the Tiger Trader from the last entry with.

This ship is super-fast and has super badass firepower in the Blakes 7 universe. Unfortunately it also has a plot-device battery life. However, if you replace these with modern energy storage systems, this can be greatly improved upon. You may also want to invest in a decent firewall/antivirus as Zen seemed to be prone to outside infiltration from more plot devices. There is also a bonus teleport for quiet unannounced arrivals, when you'd prefer to keep things that way. It also has a handy self repair and maintenance worry removal capability, represented by disco-era energy fields in the television series, but probably some more of those Red Dwarf nanobots in reality.

So if you wanted a bigger ship without the hassle, I'd go with this.

(Honourable mention to Moya from Farscape)

Along those lines, you can also find Moya, the sentient Leviathan from Farscape. Similar lean-manning, good self-repair, or more accurately, self- healing, as an organic/technological hybrid. A bit weak on offence and defence, but has a massive random star jump as a getaway mode. If you want to do some harm as well, there's also her son 'Talyn', a gunship/Leviathan hybrid.

End? Yes I think it is!

CiH - For Maggie, April 2015.

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