| abstract
| - Despite living in several unrelated continuities, it seems that human engineers in science fiction have managed to agree on two standards for ship designs. The first design, the Retro Rocket (often referred to as a “rocketship” and now a mostly Discredited Trope due to Zeerust) is (or was) a cigar-shaped needle with three or so large fins on the base. These are often either brightly coloured or chromed to make a Shiny-Looking Spaceships. This initial design is now usually found in parodies or homages to classic sci-fi. The second design, mostly based on newer works and the “realistic” age of spaceflight, follows some simple rules: 1.
* Human spaceships should be grey. While some important parts may be coloured, the majority of the spaceship should be the colour of unpainted metal.
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* Ships in anime may be painted blue instead.
* Or olive-drab if the creator's American. 1.
* While not required, visibly being constructed from riveted metal plates is encouraged, as is Borg cube-like details called greebles or nurnies. 2.
* Since Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future, larger spaceships must be angular too; the standard human spaceship will be mostly rectangular with engines on one end and weapons on the other. 3.
* Space Fighters and other small craft will be built around a cockpit and wings to look like airplanes, but may have some style. While this is probably going to be Truth in Television for military spacecraft in the near-future (with the earliest favoring the tinkertoy/habitrail/industrial plumbing aesthetic of the International Space Station, just because of the limits of our launching methods-- cylindrical rocket sections bolted together in space), eventually it may become a relic of the near-present as space-based construction becomes easier. In space, there is no gravity or air resistance to design around, and due to the distances involved and other factors visual camouflage probably won't be much use either. Historically, armies put quite a bit of thought into looking good and only stopped when it became necessary to do so; given the chance, it's likely that looking grand will be back on the agenda. The engineers will probably hate it, but then again, they probably won't be controlling things. On the other hand, in this modern, cost-conscious world, the accountants might have a thing or two to say about wasting money on decor...to say nothing of what happens when news gets back to the Federation Parliament...will the voters ever have a fit when they hear about the gobs of cash being spent to paint their ships in gold for no reason other than "it looks pretty." Existing spacecraft have so far had a mixed record: modern rockets and atmospheric landers tend to be white and aerodynamic, but blockier than sci-fi space fighters and only sometimes winged. Craft designed solely for vacuum are totally unaerodynamic, but extremely spidery and jumbled, covered in reflective foil (for heat management) and held together by networks of pipes and struts, looking much less solid than sci-fi capships. On the other hand, the products of the emerging private spaceflight industry often feature curvilinear quasi-retro stylings which bear a close resemblance to early sci-fi rockets of the zeerust school. Contrast the lines of the Scaled Composites SpaceShip series with those of the Soyuz capsules, or even with the Space Shuttle. (Mind you, the SpaceShip series are just pop-up suborbitals, and reentry from Mach 3 (SpaceShipOne) or 4 (SpaceShipTwo) is between 40 and 70 times less energetic (and thus easier) than reentry from orbital velocity. SpaceX's Dragon is orbital, and quite chunky-looking. On the other hand, an SSTO usually has enough empty space inside to greatly ease the pain of reentry, and while you can still get fairly blunt designs, you can also get this...) Also, some of these designs actually make some sense. For example, after the first two missions NASA decided to leave the external tank of the Space Shuttle un-painted because of the extra weight that pretty white veneer added (to give you an idea, the paint on a 747 jetliner weighs hundreds of pounds), not to mention the fact that it all burned up when it fell into the atmosphere anyway. For deep probes our designs are pretty non-blocky only because they are not meant for any kind of combat. Wings may be used on craft intended to work in atmosphere as well (like BSGs Vipers), even though it wouldn't probably be very practical to make a dual-purpose craft like that given the hugely different conditions, especially when considering the different atmospheres and gravities of alien worlds. Unpainted metal or reflective exteriors may also be justified if the ship is intended to fly near stars: this would reflect the light assist the ship in staying cool, similar to the way that skyscrapers in the southern USA and other hot places tend to be designed with reflective glass exteriors. Note that fictional vessels tend to use enormous amounts of energy yet typically lack thermal radiators to shed waste heat (no air-cooling in space). Although that could explain all the so-called wings... Space wings are also often used in fiction as places to put extra weapons (like missiles), and to store things (extra electronic equipment or fuel) inside them, although putting those things on or in the main hull makes more sense for a nonatmospheric Space Fighter, as spreading out the ship's mass makes little sense for a vessel designed to maneuver in vacuum in three dimensions-- better to keep it compact, to conserve angular momentum. You can increase maneuverability by putting thrusters on the tips of them a la Babylon 5 Starfuries, using the wing as essentially a big lever to rotate the ship faster, but a simple pole (especially a retractable one) would do the same job just as well and with greater shear strength (again, compactness helps here), making it less likely to bend or break off during high-thrust maneuvers whose direction is perpendicular to the broad planar surface of the wing. Internal gyroscopic flywheeels could do the same thing and be less visibly obvious tells to the enemy (no signal lights before a turn). Only Space Fighter craft designed to go both ways (atmosphere and deep space) actually need wings-- and some real airplanes don't even need them. See also Standard Sci-Fi Fleet Examples of ISO Standard Human Spaceship include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)