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Hitch a Ride: The Top 11 Coolest Spaceships

By Brian Tallerico

"Almost every boy on Earth has gone through that period when there's absolutely nothing cooler than spaceships - be they rockets, space shuttles, or X-Wing Fighters."

Worshipping spaceships is as much a passage of life as puberty for most young men. Almost every boy on Earth has gone through that period when there's absolutely nothing cooler than spaceships - be they rockets, space shuttles, or X-Wing Fighters. It's usually right after the days when nothing's cooler than a dinosaur and just before you discover that boobs aren't all that bad. Aside from promiscuous alien women and ray guns, they're one of the main reasons why we love science fiction so much. With Danny Boyle's Sunshine opening this weekend, adding the Icarus 5 to the list of cinema's most kick-ass spaceships, we thought we'd indulge in the classic game of picking favorites. Which spaceships sparked our imaginations the best and why? What makes a cool spaceship? What are our favorites? After some harsh cuts, we came up with the top eleven spaceships that have quickened our nerd pulses over the years. So, strap in, prepare for blast-off, and take the ride...

11. Eagle 5 (Spaceballs)

It may not win any style awards, but the Eagle 5 stays cool by being true to itself. It's a rocket-propelled Winnebago with wings. It's driven by a half man, half dog (a 'mog') named Barf and a bad-ass drunk named Lone Starr. What more do you want from an outer space recreational vehicle? The Eagle 5 is the Ted Nugent of hyperspace travel - not too pretty, a little trashy, but it can still kick your ass even if it's half-drunk. A Winnebago may not be the easiest ship to maneuver in an intergalactic dogfight, but it gets the job done... and with diesel gas (Liquid Schwartz package is optional. Talk to your dealer for more information).

10. Event Horizon (Event Horizon)

You wouldn't want to hang out on the Event Horizon for too long, but it comes in at number 10 because it's basically a portal to Hell... and, to be honest, we're a little scared NOT to put it on the list. The Event Horizon was big, dark, scary, and it totally stole the movie from the actors who were struggling to keep their sanity on Paul W.S. Anderson's ship of doom (wait, there were actors in Event Horizon?). How can you not get a vicarious thrill out of a spaceship that can fold space-time, creating a wormhole to anywhere in the universe, all while it convinces you to gouge your own eyes out? It's like teenaged Clive Barker's wet dream come to life.

9. Eagle Transport (Space 1999)

The Eagle Transport brought space travel out of the outer reaches and into our homes. Unlike a lot of sci-fi vehicles, the Eagle looked like something that could actually work. In fact, it looked like if you got a military helicopter and had an A-Team-style construction montage, you might be able to build one in your garage over a long weekend. The Eagles were the cars of the future, not overly-hyped or pumped up, but functional and ready for action. They didn't even have individual names. One would blow up, they'd make another one. If you took the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise out for a test flight, wouldn't you be terrified about messing it up? Not the Eagle Transport. It's the one spaceship you can go joyriding in with no worries.

8. USS Swinetrek (The Muppet Show)

Three words - Pigs in Space. Captained by Link Hogthrob, the USS Swinetrek was the heart of one of an entire generation's favorite sketches on The Muppet Show. First Mate Piggy, Dr. Julius Strangepork, and the rest of the red-shirted pig passengers poked fun at Star Trek way before geek humor was cool and were hilarious every time out. And, even if you ignore the timeless appeal of the Muppets, you've got to love that the Swinetrek was shaped like a pig, for God's sake. Flying in a vehicle that's actually shaped like its passengers is just pretty damn cool. If you could fly a spaceship that looked like a giant man, wouldn't you? Of course you would, and you would name him Voltron, and you would love him.

7. Nostromo (Alien)

The Nostromo isn't a flashy spaceship, but Alien is such a sci-fi classic that it almost has to make the cut. But what it lacked in flash or features, the Nostromo more than made up for with pure, unbridled suspense. You have to give it to Ridley Scott. The Nostromo was the first outer space haunted house, a beyond-cool postmodern backdrop for a horror film that finally gave a great answer to the age-old question: "Why doesn't the girl being chased by the monster just run out of the haunted house?" (Answer: Because she's surrounded by the crushing vacuum of space.) On its own, it's really just an intergalactic tugboat, the blue collar worker of spaceships, but when you add in Ripley, the alien, and the two hours of terror that took place between its walls, the Nostromo becomes one of the most bad ass spaceships in history.

6. Heart of Gold (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

If we're ranking these ships on special features alone, the Heart of Gold should probably be number one. This oddball space-liner, mined from the brain of Douglas Adams, can travel through every point in the universe at the exact same time with its Infinite Improbability Drive. Wrap your brain around that. Your Toyota Corolla can't even get you to work on time. The Heart of Gold can get to every work at every time all at once. Whoa. My brain hurts. It was stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox at its unveiling on the planet Damogran, but unfortunately for Zaph, the ship is as random as it is powerful. When you turn on the Improbability Drive, you might get to your destination or you might turn into a sofa. Deal with that. Wait, my brain hurts again.

5. Serenity (Firefly)

The coolest spaceship of the new millennium had a movie named after it - a movie that not nearly enough non-nerds went to see. If Fox hadn't been such jerks to Joss Whedon and his under-rated sci-fi western Firefly, kids everywhere would probably be playing with their Serenity toys right now, filling them with Mal and Wash action figures and throwing them off their roofs. ("I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soaaaaarrr...") Wouldn't that be a beautiful world? Seriously, like the Nostromo, the Serenity was made significantly cooler by its passengers. She's really just a run-of-the-mill cargo vessel. The poor girl has no weapons or defenses... unless a sarcastic wit and a hot crew count as a weapon (never hurt the Millennium Falcon).

4. Discovery One (2001)

In the pantheon of spaceships, the Discovery One is especially cool because it doesn't take sh*t from anyone. Want to go somewhere? It'll take you... if it's in the mood. Want to land? Not today. Want to be taken to Jupiter and have a really trippy journey across space and time and be turned into a giant star fetus? OK, on that one, the Discovery can oblige. We're not sure if the Discovery would have been as nearly cool without its control freak AI, HAL, but it had to make the list. We were afraid our computers would try to kill us if it didn't.

3. Battlestar Galactica (Battlestar Galactica)

We never thought that we'd have such a nerd-crush on something driven by Edward James Olmos (well, he was pretty dreamy in Blade Runner), but the Battlestar Galactica leads the one of the best sci-fi wagon trains in history. And, of course, we're talking about the new SciFi Channel version of BG, not the original '70s version. That ship probably would never be called cool... cheesy maybe... or disco-licious. But the 21st-century Commander Adama, Gaius Baltar, Starbuck, and the rest of the gang have finally made the Battlestar bad-ass. It's the only ship that survived the Cylon attack because it wasn't all wi-fi and techy. The Galactica is an outer space workhorse, an old school battleship that has no bells and whistles, but will never go down in a fight. This helps when you're being pursued by murderous, cyborg, six-foot-tall swimsuit models. It really does.

2. Enterprise (Star Trek)

You have to admit that the Enterprise has a bit of an unfair advantage when you consider how much more exposure it's had over the years than most of its competitors on this list. The setting of countless nerd-centric fantasies the Enterprise is arguably the most recognizable spaceship in the world. You could draw just the outline of the Enterprise, and even people who don't speak English would say "Make it so" or start doing a bad Kirk impression. The Enterprise is the alpha-spaceship, the one that every kid of every age wants to hang out on. It's been the focus of rides, games, and served as the foundation of a decades-old multimedia phenomenon. Heck, they even named a REAL space shuttle after it. There's only one ship cooler...

1. Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

Has any other ship on this list made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? We think not...

When ranking the coolest of the cool spaceships in history, a few things become clear. Ships like the Serenity prove that the passengers are as important as the ship itself. Ships like the Heart of Gold prove that being able to do something amazing makes you even cooler. It's hard to beat a ship that becomes an essential part of a universe or mythology like the Enterprise, and every ship on this list made the grade thanks to a healthy dose of character and personality. And while most of the classic spaceships can boast a few of these qualities, none meet all of them nearly as well or as memorably as the Millennium Falcon. Cool passengers? You can't get any more bad-ass than Han Solo and, when you consider that he won the ship playing Sabacc with Lando, it makes it that much cooler. Awesome abilities? Um, without the Falcon's maneuverability, quick guns, and hyperdrive, Luke Skywalker would've been dead long before he became a Jedi and the Empire would still be striking back nearly thirty years later. Importance to mythology? Are you kidding? The Millennium Falcon has been represented in toy form, game form, movie form, lunchbox form, Trapper Keeper form, and every other form that a kid finds cool. As for personality, you simply can't beat the Falcon. "It's fast enough for you, old man." Hell yeah, it is.