Just Plain Beautiful Spaceships

[Havok]

Oh Jessica, you are as gorgeous as this one space shi-
Hey where are you going?

[gigabytelord]

Oh Jessica, you are as gorgeous as this one space shi-
Hey where are you going?

Hey no one said it had to be a monogamous relationship

[Ford Prefect]

No, not at all... Why can't people understand the difference between "beauty" and "looks cool".
I mean, I know it's subjective... but to a point. Come on.

Like the VIEW is beautiful, the ship, looks cool.

The Venture Star is a really great piece of design, and it exemplifies the work which went into Avatar (you can even see how the engines diverge so the drive tails don't melt the habitat section), but it's not beautiful. I think a design like it could be beautiful, there's a certain fragility to Project Valkyrie inspired stuff. I've been working on something which features a pretty obviously inspired by Cameron and Pellegrino interstellar cruiser, but for me it's more important to emphasise the delicate trusses and clean geometric shapes. Less industrial, more spun glass.

[The Yosemite Bear]

The Valley Forge from Silent running is a good classic mix of form and function.

[Havok]

Oh Jessica, you are as gorgeous as this one space shi-
Hey where are you going?

Hey no one said it had to be a monogamous relationship

Wow...

WHOOSH!

[gigabytelord]

Oh Jessica, you are as gorgeous as this one space shi-
Hey where are you going?

Hey no one said it had to be a monogamous relationship

Wow...

WHOOSH!

It's hard to catch something that's been thrown so high it sails clear into orbit...

On second thought I did word that in an odd manner didn't I?

[Shroom Man 777]

[Formless]

No, not at all... Why can't people understand the difference between "beauty" and "looks cool".
I mean, I know it's subjective... but to a point. Come on.

Like the VIEW is beautiful, the ship, looks cool.

To me it is beautiful, I don't know if it's the straight forward, simplistic and extremely realistic design or just me being nerdy over a spaceship, but I honestly find that ship to be absolutely gorgeous.

Its about as realistic as a plague zombie. You can rationalize it, you can even speculate on how such a viral disease could be made to work (rabies comes to mind). But in the end, its still speculative at best, and not really anymore "real" than the Swordfish II. Appealing to how "realistic" the art is doesn't actually make it beautiful, and in any case even for a "realistic" ship you can do better.

The nBSG Galactica is the only other ship that I find beautiful.

Once upon a time, rocketships strove to look like bullets speeding through space. Add a little chrome and some sexy curves, and they looked beautiful.

Well, if that's the aesthetic of the past, the Galactica pays tribute to it by taking all of those things and saying "but wouldn't it look better with a broken nose?" It looks like a bullet all right. It looks like an old soft lead piece of shit someone managed to dig up out of the dirt, then for shits and giggles decided to reload into an old rusty steel case. You wouldn't fire it out of a gun unless you absolutely had to, and if you did you could never get the barrel clean again. That's how "beautiful" the Galactica is as spaceships go.

I mean, if I were geeky enough to put a model spaceship up for display in my house and I could choose between a model of the Galactica and the Millennium Falcon. Even though the Falcon as much as defined the "used future" look for spaceships, I would choose the old rustbucket over the Galactica. At least the Falcon has a paintjob, even if it is flaking off in places.

You want to see a beautiful spaceship? Fooking Sputnik:



Its more real than the Venture Star.

[Simon_Jester]

Da, Shroom, it is magnificent. Although part of that's the lighting; from the wrong angle and light, that same ship might look as ugly as a Vogon Constructor.

No, not at all... Why can't people understand the difference between "beauty" and "looks cool".
I mean, I know it's subjective... but to a point. Come on.

Like the VIEW is beautiful, the ship, looks cool.

I thought we were looking for:

Things that look like someone put in the effort to think about form and function and have them complement each other in a beautiful way?

I don't think that the form of Venture Star is inherently appealing.

Honestly, I could say the same about some of the others- Siege's latest, for example. To me, one of the features of a 'beautiful' thing is clean lines- ships that have jagged surfaces, lots of little spines or ridges, I don't think look good.

Again, I'm hoping we can draw a clear distinction between "pretty" and "endearingly ugly." One guideline: realism should not make a thing more beautiful. It doesn't necessarily make it less beautiful, but it doesn't make it more so. The F-104 I showed you in the original post and the XF-85 Goblin:


...are both equally real, they both physically worked, but that doesn't meant they're equally good looking.

Realism is determined by the laws of nature and engineering requirements. Nature does not care whether things look good to us. So with a few exceptions, making a thing better designed will not inherently make it more beautiful, except to a narrow class of people who see everything like it was a technical drawing.

[Shroom Man 777]

[gigabytelord]

Prophecy Class Battle cruiser from eve online. It's not exactly my "style" but it is rather pleasing to the eye I suppose.

[Ultonius]

The Riguang-class Light Space Dominance Vehicle, of the People's Liberation Army Navy Space Force, from Transhuman Space, purely because of the butterfly wings embossed on its radiators. (Sorry I can't find a picture of it on its own - it's the red one on the left.)

[Bright]

My favorite iteration of the Starcraft carrier, even though it has no basis in gameplay whatsoever. I don't like the actual spindly designs as much.

This one's nice too. I especially like how you can't even tell which side's the front at first glance.

[wautd]

The Akira Class from Star Trek.
It has a nice mix of looking both elegant and deadly. Hell, even its name is pretty badass.

[fordlltwm]

How about the beam ship from Tron, not sure if it counts as a true spaceship or not though

[VF5SS]

Hell, even its name is pretty badass.

Ah but how many people can pronounce it correctly :3

[CUE]

imo:



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