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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"UNEF's first starships had been possessed of a kind of spidery, delicate beauty. But with various technological developments, structural strength had become more important than conserving mass (one of the old ships would have folded up like an accordion if you'd tried a twenty-five-gee maneuver), and that was reflected in the design; stolid, heavy, functional-looking."''|'''Joe Haldeman''', ''[[The Forever War]]''}}
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:
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
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 [[Retro Rocket|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 [
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 [[Space Plane|intended to work in atmosphere as well]] (like [[Battlestar Galactica|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 [[Space Is Cold|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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20100619224115/http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3au.html 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 [[Macross Missile Massacre|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
See also [[Standard Sci-Fi Fleet]].▼
▲See also [[Standard Sci-Fi Fleet]]
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]''/''[[Robotech]]''; Except for the ''Macross'' itself (which was, of course, alien in origin), most human vessels are pretty close to this. It should be noted that the ''Macross'' was in fact redesigned closer to those lines. Later subverted with the later Macross-class ships which were more angular, and ''Robotech's'' SDF-3, which was originally designed/disguised with Zentraedi-like lines, but by the end of the Third Robotech War had the same ''Mospeada''-style design.
* While all the different factions are usually human in ''[[Gundam]]'', the ships used by most incarnations of [[The Federation]] tend to be more boxy and utilitarian looking, [[Space Is an Ocean|generally designed to resemble naval battleships]] and come in shades of grey, olive or white, while the the various space colony factions tend to use more exotic, organic looking designs.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Lampshaded in [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s ''[[Acorna]]'' series, where the Linyaari are openly baffled as to why human spaceships only come in one color. Slightly subverted in that Linyaari ships are, to human eyes, painted in loud and garish colors.
* Deliberately averted, avoided, hell, run away from in Darren Aronofsky's ''[[The Fountain]]'', where the Astronaut's
* In [[David Weber]]'s ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series it's mentioned that all of the major powers use reactive pigments to give their ships a primary color to distinguish them in visual inspections, but it's also noted how easy it is to change the paint-scheme.
** As for the shapes, given the physics of the universe, they tend towards a generally cylindrical design, with all warships having “hammerheads” on both ends to allow room for chase armament ([[Space Is an Ocean|similar to those on old-fashioned sailing warships]]).
* Subverted in [[David Drake]]'s ''Reaches'' trilogy, where the main characters' ships have ceramic hulls to resist the corrosive atmosphere of their native Venus. Every other spacefaring culture uses metal hulls, and it's noted that when the stresses of [[Subspace or Hyperspace|Transit]] become too great, a ceramic ship falls apart all at once, with a total loss of life (one ship is seen to have come out of Transit looking like a cloud of gravel), while a metal ship's hull might hold together long enough for some of the crew to be rescued. Also, ''everybody's'' hulls tend to be rounded, usually more-or-less cigar-shaped, although they fly or land with the long axis parallel to the ground, unlike “rocketships.”
== [[Live
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]''
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' : Humorously lampshaded in
{{quote|'''Ranger Dulann''': ''If human military designers had their way every colour of the spectrum would be removed except for grey, green and black and we would all live in windowless boxes.''}}
** Averted with ''[[Crusade]]''{{'}}s [http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Excalibur ''Excalibur''], although it must be said it was a joint human/Minbari project.
*** You can see both design philosophies incorporated in it. You have the Minbari traditional triple-fin hull structure, but it's also dark grey similar to the ''Omega''-class destroyers. Interestingly, the human ''Hyperion''-class heavy cruisers are brightly-colored with white and blue. However, those (as mentioned in the fluff) were designed by a different military contractor than the ''Nova''e and the ''Omega''s.
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' mostly averts this trope, with the majority of ships seen having either a large cylindrical design or a smaller, more agile (but still not blocky) design, such as with Serenity herself. However, the ships do tend to have very metallic appearances, and several of the ships briefly shown do fit the trope better than the larger Alliance vessels and Serenity.
* The [[Red Dwarf]] is painted red, but that only serves to make it look ''more'' like a giant, flying brick.
* Generally followed to a T in ''[[Space: 1999]]'', with the show's signature Eagles being entirely utilitarian shuttles designed to function in the absence of an atmosphere, in lunar gravity. They were mostly grey, although some had orange details. The alien spaceships, on the other hand, were often brightly-coloured, in the style of contemporary sci-fi artists such as Chris Foss and Peter Elson.
* ''[[Stargate]]'' : The [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/stargate/images/c/c0/F302.jpg F-302] is essentially a forward-swept flying wing with jet and rocket engines. The [http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/stargate/images/2/2a/X-303.jpg X-303 class battlecruiser Prometheus] and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20121030221658/http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/stargate/images/3/3e/ApolloOverEarth.jpg BC-304 class deep-space carriers] however, being built out of a naquadah/trinium alloy, fit this trope perfectly.
* The rectangular aspect is averted in ''[[Star Trek]]'', but they're definitely grey metal plates.
** Indeed, one of the technical manuals explicitly noted that aside from the hull markings, the tonnes of paint that normally go on ships was left off around the Constitution-class refits of the movies. If memory serves, they started thinking it looks neater that way too. And apparently Starfleet started retracting its normal way of avoiding
** ST ships also tend to have smoother outlines in the later series because [[Space Is an Ocean|warp fields act like hydrodynamics]]. The Galaxy class is the last class to have a highly distinct saucer and engineering section - later designs such as the Intrepid (Voyager), Sovereign (Enterprise-E) and Prometheus class have much more flowing lines where the join between the two sections is much less obvious, although most are still capable of separation, the Intrepid class being the only proven exception.
** Actually, it seems worth noting that humans are pretty much the only guys we ever see on ''Star Trek'' traveling in [[Flying Saucer
*** Its aliens like the Romulans and Klingons who have clunkier looking hulls, and the [[Hive Mind|most clunky looking ship on the show]] was designed specifically to look ''in''human.
**** Not really Klingon designs so much, which tend to have a relatively sweeping design, with the various Bird of Prey designs' wings and neck, and the [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Vorcha_class.jpg Vor'cha] and [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:IKS_Negh%27Var.jpg Negh'var] classes.
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** One model of [[Drop Ship]] in particular, the Leopard, was even called “the Brick” in the canon itself. Its slab-sided appearance, coupled with a small bridge, stubby wings and massive engines on what amounts to a nigh-rectangular chunk of steel means it falls squarely within this trope.
* ''d20 Future'' ([[Science Fiction]] expansion to ''[[D20 Modern]]'') generally presents this as the “default” look for spaceships.
* [[Traveller]] : There is no standard for traveller; it depends on function and aesthetic taste and there are myriads of possible ship designs(indeed some traveller fans mainly like designing ships). Ships made to actually land on and take off from a planet generally have a "needle/wedge" design which looks something like a space shuttle. However this requires sacrifice in payload and the heaviest ships are generally serviced in orbit.
** The Lightning-class ships a multipurpose merchant/scout/privateer built by the Terrans for viking like voyages into Vilani space is a handsome ship that looks like a long wedge with short stubby wings.
** One cool(but not unlikely in [[Real Life]]) gimmick on Traveller ships is a programmable surface that can be used to display a giant "screen-saver". These are available both inside and outside. Another gimmick is the Shipboard Information System which is sort of the ships internet. This means that one can picture much of the dialogue of a given Traveller story taking place online from PCs and NPCs all over the ship, which can make for an interesting plot device and one not yet familiar to [[Space Opera]] .
* In [[Warhammer
** And due to unpopularity with the fans, the new Tau fleet follows a more graceful, anime-inspired design.
** [[Space Marine]] ships, on the other hand, fall somewhere in between. While they have elements of the regular Imperial design, they use more hard angles and less detailing. Also, while colour scheme varies by chapter, many of the promotional shots of the models are indeed rendered in mostly grey.
* Played very straight in ''Firestorm Armada'' the human faction the [[The Alliance|Terran Alliance]], their ships are usually flat, and shaped in squares, and triangles, with most of their color being blue and grey.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Dark Star One]]''{{context}}
* Caldari ships in ''[[
** However, Gallente ships tend to have curvy organic-looking surfaces and Amarr ships are bright golden in colour and possibly most resemble the 'rocket ship' design in a few cases.
** [[Justified Trope]] because each race's ships reflect their standardized personality.
{{quote|Caldari: Corporate, efficient, with emphasis on shields and electronics. Designs keep out the unnecessary.
Amarr:
Gallente: Freedom loving more artistic, this more flowing and free designs in ships.
Minmatar: Freed slaves. So all “older” ship designs should look like junk heaps as that's all they had to work with
Thus cap' ships look more finished because they actually have an empire to support a cap' fleet. }}
* Pretty much averted in the first ''[[Escape Velocity]]'', which (in part due to the simple models) had ships with aerodynamic, rather anime-like shapes. Later games (especially Terrans and Voinians in ''Override'', Federation and Aurorans in ''Nova'') conformed more and more closely to this.
* ''[[Free Space]]'' does this with all Terran ships (and with the [https://web.archive.org/web/20140921185500/http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/Gtvacolossus.jpg Colossus], which was a combination Terran and Vasudan ship). For the [http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v423/kc1991/VasCruis2.png Vasudan] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20120713012948/http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/Sjsathanas.jpg Shivan] ships, tendencies are to have more curved and smooth designs instead of blocky
* ''[[Halo]]'', the UNSC ships are boxy in shape, in contrast to the curvy purple flowing aesthetics of the Covenant. Acts as a visual reference for both how far advanced the Covenant ships are compared to the clumsy human vessels, as well as their [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] status verus the practical human military.
* ''[[Homeworld]]'' with the exception of the Mothership.
* ''[[Infinite Space]]'': mostly averted, especially in Adis, where the ships are both extremely funky-looking and pink, but it does happen: the Freedom and Nebula in particular are both grey, flying bricks.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' averts this: the ''Normandy'' SR-1 and SR-2, the main ships in the series so far, are non-conventionally shaped, though vaguely reminiscent of rocket ship designs, and always brightly painted white. This is sort of justified, however, by the fact that visual recognition in space is almost impossible, so it doesn't really matter what color the ship is painted. Other ships featured in the series tend to follow the same philosophy, and the ''Destiny's Ascension'' is essentially a [http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091227112424/masseffect/images/e/e8/DestinyAscensionFlyby.png big flying cross] [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090207040549/masseffect/images/2/2b/MassEffect_2008-08-13_12-37-43-71.png with an oval cut out of the middle.]
** Other races' ships are shown and generally avoid this trope. Even the quarians, who claim to salvage any ship they come upon appear to have the exact same design (a cross between the Euro symbol and the letter Q) in the third game's cutscenes, except for their massive spherical liveships. The [[
* ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'': Played straight with the TEC, who modifed their ships from cargo and civilian vessels, but averted with the Advent(who are also humans, just psychic ones with a different culture). Advent ships are sleek, [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships|shiny]], and definitely non-utilitarian in appearance.
* Terrans of ''[[
* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' plays this straight. Human ships are oblong and consists of blocks riveted to a central frame and are the most utilitarian-looking of all the species: The only off part is the very noticeable ring structure around the engines (it's their faster-than-light drive). Because of this engine, human ships also have poor turret coverage on the back and tend towards front-heavy ships with forward-and-side firing arcs. While paint schemes for different sides makes some of the colour variable, the default ship colour for humans tends towards the grey with some red and green mixed in (by contrast, Tarka's ships are mostly bright red and deep green, the Hivers use beige, the Liir use turquoise, the Zuul blood red and the Morrigi deep purple).
* In the ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' games, the human ships have varied between the utilitarian, blocky gray designs of ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]] III'' and onwards, and more curvy designs of the earlier games. (''Wing Commander III'' and ''IV'' used a primitive polygon [[Game Engine]], as opposed to the first two installments' bitmap sprite graphics.) In all the games featuring the [[Mega Neko|Kilrathi]], most of the designs have a base tan color with various “warm” colors used for markings, but [[All in The Manual|the manual notes that the color is the color of the metals used for their armor]].
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* ''[[X-COM]] Interceptor'' tends to avert this, with the human ships actually using functional, forward-swept-wing designs, or in the case of the second-tier ship, rounded wings. All ships are also painted, and in the case of the X-1A tier one ship, even whimsical, with shark teeth painted on the nose.
** The carrier ''MacArthur'', which you have to protect during the final 2-part mission partly plays this trope straight.
* ''[[Tachyon the Fringe]]'' has this for the [[La Résistance|Bora]], whose warships are hastily-converted cargo haulers and mining ships. Some of the designs aren't so functional, though, like the ''Battleaxe''-class fighters, which prominently feature a sharpened ''blade'' on the top. Mostly averted with other ships, although freighters still have an elongated, blocky look. [[Mega Corp|GalSpan]], notably, has sleek-looking ships with wings (fighters) and the blue-and-white color scheme.
* The Terrans in ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'' by default have a ship aesthetic midway between ''[[Star Trek]]'' and ''[[Babylon 5]]'', with mainly rectangular shapes and stuff taken from this trope's catalogue with bluntly triangular wings, chunky radar dishes, large and blocky externals. Unless you reset the colour scheme, Terran vehicles come painted white and blue. When [[Design
* ''[[Civilization]] III'', true to its fame of having everything dead realistic, lets you build an UN Unity spaceship that more or less looks like an extremely huge rocket. This has a practical reason though: the Unity requires an aerodynamic shape in order to cut through the Earth's atmosphere.
* Played straight for the Colonials in ''[[Battlestar Galactica Online]]''. Cylons, on the other hand, tend to use more sleek lines and curves.
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[[Category:Spacecraft]]
[[Category:ISO Standard Human Spaceship]]
[[Category:This Index Has Standards]]
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