Spaceship

There’s a lot going on at the moment. It’s difficult to know what I should be writing about. In fact I would go so far as to say I don’t want to write about any of it, largely because I don’t want to think about it. But sometimes you just have to sit down and write your way through the important issues of the day, month, or year, depending on how much time is ganging up on you all once on this particular occasion.

I downloaded a new computer game this week. It lets you (among other things) design and fight your own spaceships against giant alien pandas. And given the amount of time I want to spend not thinking about how I have no job, no car and no clue what’s going on, it’s highly likely I’m going to spend a fair bit of time wailing on said pandas with my supercharged spaceships of destruction.

Besides, it’s clear I’ve been flagrantly abusing the “spaceship” tag on this blog for far too long now. It’s about time I actually wrote a post that fits it properly. So here we go.

How to make a spaceship for Garry

General hull shape

Anticlimactically, this is probably the most controversial choice of them all. Naturally I decided to lead with it, in this very thoroughly researched and carefully thought out post. I’ve spent a stupid (and rather embarrassing) amount of time checking out everything that Google images throws up when you search the word “spaceship” in order to decide which spaceship design looks the sexiest. I couldn’t really get past USS Voyager from the Star Trek universe in the end.

I mean in the vacuum of space, the general sleekness of a spaceship is completely irrelevant. But Voyager still wins. If you’re going to find yourself lost on the other side of the galaxy, you want to at least look good, with reliable drive shafts while you’re doing it.

It would also be cool if it was orange instead of grey, made out of unobtainium instead of the traditional titanium alloy, and bigger on the inside.

Propulsion

Again, Start Trek’s warp nacelles are probably the standard here, although the hyperdrives from Star Wars would also work I suppose. Basically anything that’s going faster than light is going to be okay. It’s going to need it over the next few months. I’d also be interested in an improbability drive, or alternatively a temporal distortion drive from the soon to be released Samantha Triton novels.

Soon to be released, that is, if my friends ever send me my freaking feedback already.

It would be nice if you could fuel it with pasta rather than minerals or fossil fuels.

Armoury

“Damn yokels can’t even tell a transport ship ain’t got no guns on it”.

Yeah, well my ship is going to be able to blow your stupid transport ship out of the sky. Sorry Mal. I can take the sky from you. Bwa ha haaaaaa!

The planet busting laser from the Death Star would be ideal, but might be a little impractical, not to mention expensive. I’m thinking of a nice tasteful combination of photon torpedoes, EMP cannons, a picture of a bear holding a shark and a big old dalek gun mounted right up the top. As long as it makes that awesome bwoooooh-piiiuuuuuuuu noise. I don’t care if you can’t hear it in space. I’ll know.

Special Effects

Well, obviously when it lands you want the organ music from ET. And it would be cool if you could hear Darth Vader’s mask in the corridors every now and then. Oh, and I want it to glow blue and leave a trail of fire when it takes off, like the De’Lorean.

Oh freak me sideways. What was I thinking? A Flux Capacitor. Definitely we need one of those. Even if time travel turns out to be against the laws of physics and easily comprehensible plot lines, we can just have it installed on the wall, right next to the name plate that looks like a serial number but is really a bible verse.

This is going to be awesome.

Crew

Captain: Me, obviously. Why would you even ask that?

First Officer: Hmmm… would you go with Malcolm Reynolds or Commander Chakotay? I would… what’s that? Really? Well… okay.

First Officer: Kimberly Webster

Pilot: Samantha Triton. Yes, okay she only exists in my head. So does this whole spaceship. What’s your point?

Chief Engineer: The Doctor(s). All eleven of him. The ship will never go where it’s supposed to, but at least it will always get there. And if it ever explodes, we’ll take the whole universe with us.

Chief Science Officer: We don’t need one of those. We’re already on a freaking spaceship. How much more science do we need? … no we don’t. … I don’t have to do anything. … No we don’t. … Okay! Fine.

Chief Science Officer: Dr Sheldon Cooper.

 I'm hoping to have the GSS Velociraptor commissioned and ready for departure sometime before the end of June. I have no idea where I'm going, but since when was that any reason not to run away in a spaceship?

Make of that as little as possible. Or just make me a spaceship already.




Garry with 2 Rs