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10 Best Ideas for Interplanetary Communication
10 Best Ideas for Interplanetary Communication
In the future, as we send space probes and manned missions to explore the solar system and possibly colonize other worlds, there's a major problem that we'll have to overcome -- keeping in touch with them. Read more »

Author's Note: 10 Fictional Spacecraft We Wish Were Real

You don't have to look far on the Internet to find a top 10, 20 or 100 list of awesome fictional spacecraft. All they really have to do is look awesome and do gnarly things. In this article, I attempted to highlight spaceships that illuminate something real about the dream of true cosmic exploration. What hurdles do we have to overcome? What holds us back from, as Carl Sagan puts it, wading out from this shore on the cosmic ocean?

Plus, yeah, I made sure to pick some extremely gnarly spaceships. I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I enjoyed writing about them.

Sources

  • Adams, Douglas. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Pan Books. 1979.
  • Banks, Iain M. "The Player of Games." 1988. Macmillan.
  • "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." The Science Channel. 1980.
  • "Dead Space" Official Web site. Electronic Arts. 2012 (Feb. 22, 2012) http://deadspace.ea.com/
  • "Farscape." The Jim Henson Company. 1999.
  • Games Workshop. 2012 (Feb. 22, 2012) http://www.games-workshop.com
  • Herbert, Frank. "Dune." 1965. Chilton Books.
  • Morrison, Grant. "The Invisibles Vol. 7: The Invisible Kingdom." Dec. 1, 2002.
  • "SDF-1." Robotech.com. 2012. (Feb. 16, 2012) http://www.robotech.com/infopedia/mecha/viewmecha.php?id=6
  • Tyson, Neil deGrasse. Personal interview. Sept. 22, 2011. (Feb. 16, 2012) http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/09/22/stbym-interview-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson/
  • United Nations. "Deforestation in decline but rate remains alarming, UN agency says." UN News Centre. March 25, 2010. (Feb. 17, 2012) http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34195
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    Start the Countdown
  • 10: SDF-1 Macross
  • 9: USG Ishimura
  • 8: Imperial Battleship
  • 7: The Starship Heart of Gold
  • 6: The Guild Heighliner
  • 5: Moya the Leviathan
  • 4: The Culture GSV
  • 3: The Spaceship of the Imagination
  • 2: Valley Forge
  • 1: Barbelith
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