Top 10 Spaceships (Movies, TV, Books, Other)

In honor of the Apollo moon landing anniversary, here is my list of Top 10 Spaceships:

1. Saturn V. This one is real. That puts it at the top of the list. The only spaceship that took travelers to another world and back, in real life. And today is the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. A Saturn V took the astronauts there. Another noteworthy and influential real spaceship is Sputnik.
   
2. Starship Enterprise. Everyone knows what this one looks like, and can name it, even if they get things wrong and say that it was piloted by Darth Vader and Dr. Spock.
3. The Death Star. Star Wars has many ships, but this is the one that makes it into the list.The Deathstar is representative of two common types of ships: the planet-sized ship (such as Fritz Leiber's "Wanderer') and the doomsday ship that goes around blowing up plants (think of the flying artichoke in the most recent "Star Trek" movie) . The Death Star is far and away the most famous of any of these types of ships. The Wanderer (seen to the right in the cover of the 1976 novel), like the Death Star, is of both types: it is planet sized, and it shows up to threaten the Earth and eat the moon.


4. Jupiter II. From Lost in Space, the most famous flying saucer of all. Sleek, very fast, and very roomy inside, it could be piloted by one or two people. It was like a space motor home. Also noteworthy and influential: the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars. Similar in size and shape to the Jupiter II, but it is well armed and doesn't have to outrun missiles like the Jupiter II does. Jupiter II represents a very well-known class of spaceship: the flying saucer.


5. Cyrano's Spaceship. Yes, there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac. Near as I can tell, the real Cyrano de Bergerac was the first science-fiction author, and the very first spaceships were those mentioned by him. Science-fiction fans owe a great deal of debt to France, which gave us Cyrano and Jules Verne. Cyrano wrote space-travel stories in the 1650s. His moon voyages involved different contraptions, one powered by the rising dew of the morning, and the other powered by firecrackers. In "Voyage to the Sun" he describes his ship: "It was a large, very light Box, that shut tight and close:of about six Foot high, and three Foot Square. This Box had a hole in it below; and over the Cover, which had likewise a hole in it, I placed a Vessel of Christal, bored through in the same manner, made in a Globular Figure,but very large, the Orifice whereof joyn'd exactly to and was enchanced, in the hole I had made in the head.The Vessel was purposely made with many Angles, andin form of an Icosaedron, to the end that every Facet being convex and concave, my Boul might produce the effect of a Burning-Glass... It shut so close, that a grain of Air could not enter it, except by the two openings; and I had placed a little very light Board within for my self to sit upon. ". Kind of hard to read, isn't it? But it is probably a lot more comprehensible than the technical documents for the Space Shuttle.
6. "Asteroids" Spaceship. Many of us have piloted spaceships. In videogames, anyway. The most well known of these, while nameless, would probably be the ship from Atari's "Asteroids". It could bust space rocks (LOTS of space rocks), shoot the occasional enemy saucer, and go into hyperspace.


7. Battlestar Galactica. The producers of the show in 1979 said that the general shape of the ship was that of an alligator on skis. The shape was kept in the series that ran during the 2000's also. While the two Battlestar Galactica TV series were very much different from each other in many ways, they both featured the last battlestar Galactica, the last hope of humanity, leading the few remaining humans to a new home.


8. Nostromo.If the Jupiter II is the fun ship, the Nostromo is the least fun ship. Unless you like scary spook-houses. Then you might like it. A cross between an oil refinery and a haunted house. It is featured in the first Alien movie, and has lots of dripping water, mist, and not much light at all.


9. Minbari Cruiser. Babylon 5 had many great ships, including the shimmering spider-like Shadow ships. I choose the Minbari fighter design to put on this list, as it is one of the most unusual out there, looking like it is assembled from grasshopper parts and seashells. Sorry, the space station Babylon 5 is left off this list, as is Deep Space Nine. These are more stations than they are moving ships. The Minbari Cruiser is also included as an example of the freedom of science-fiction ship design afforded by the move from models to CGI.


10. Rama. From books by science fiction great Arthur C. Clarke. This is probably the most well-known spacecraft from science fiction novels. It is a sort of huge hollow space-station like craft (like Babylon 5), but it can be piloted and moves very fast. Below is the fold-out cover art from the early 1970s edition of Rendezvous with Rama
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Honorable Mention: Red Dwarf, the invading ship from the Halo videogame, the Heart of Gold (from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy), the mothership from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", Discovery from "2001: A Space Odyssey" Nebechednezzar from The Matrix (which is probably not even a spaceship). I know my list is subjective. What other ones belong here?