10 Fictional Spacecraft We Wish Were Real

If you’re looking for another random assortment of galactic hotrods, you’ve come to the wrong top 10 list.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cool spaceships just as much as the next guy. Who doesn’t? The inner geek longs to climb into the cockpit of an X-wing starfighter, open up the Swordfish II on the galactic tarmac and slingshot a Klingon Bird-of-Prey around the sun.

But this article is going to answer to a higher calling. It’s not enough that a ship is merely redonkulous. Free from the restraints of engineering or even basic physics, most fictional spacecraft manage redonkulousity just fine.

Nope, this list is concerned with which fictional spacecraft would actually benefit humanity in a meaningful way, which out-of-this-world rides would awaken a true space-faring civilization and save us from ourselves.

Let’s fire up the engines, shall we? Engage.

Humans are amazing creatures, capable of achieving just about anything we set our minds to. The thing is, we tend to blow our limitless potential on foreign wars and new episodes of “Fear Factor” instead of scientific advancement. Sure, space colonization might ensure the long-term survival of the human race, but we’d far rather watch game show contestants drink donkey semen on network TV.

What if we could just steal spacefaring technology instead of developing it ourselves? That’s what makes the SDF-1 Macross from the “Robotech” anime series so appealing. This massive alien battle fortress mysteriously crashed in the South Pacific and, since no one immediately reported it missing, humans spent close to a decade stripping it down like a stolen Honda Civic in a New Jersey chop shop.

Of course, the evil, alien Zentraedi fleets eventually came to look for it, but by then we’d benefited from the stolen science and learned to use the SDF-1 Macross as our own planetary defense system.

Sure, the “Dead Space” video game mostly depicts the USG Ishimura as a haunted-house spaceship overrun with disgusting corpse monsters. But if that’s all you remember, you’re missing the big picture. This fictional 25th century vessel is also the Earth’s largest planet cracker, a class of industrial starship designed to carve up a planet like Thanksgiving turkey and harvest the choice slices.

Sound dastardly? Well, it beats carving up our own planet for delicious mineral ore. When not fueling our worst nightmares, the USG Ishimura represents an industrially motivated and financially sustainable space program. You know, one fueled by money and greed. A planet cracker like this would revolutionize the space exploration business in no time. Orbital shipyards would spring to life, spawning fleets built and fueled from the bones of destroyed worlds.

Sure, we might also unleash a living hell of alien body horror, but somehow I think that’s a risk big business is willing to take.