This made my geek gland explode.
That is one small part of a monster image comparing the sizes of a bunch of different starships across many different TV shows.
Man, that’s cool. Geeky to the nth power, but cool.
But where is Serenity? Some parts of the ‘verse are more equal than others, I’m reckoning.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
January 17th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
And where is Spaceball One? Was it too big for this picture? “We Brake For Nobody”.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
They need the NEW Galactica
January 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I could be wrong, but I think this image predates Firefly (and the new Galactica etc.)
Still very cool, though.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hmmm…no death star. Bummer.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
They make a serious error in saying that the USS Discovery of 2001: A Space Odyssey is 98.75 meters long, while the Alexei Leonov from 2010 is 102 meters in length. Both Clarke’s novel and the film establish that the Leonov is short and squat compared to the Discovery.
Shameless.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Maybe the Death Star was too big to fit. After all, that’s no moon. Its a space station.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
1] Where’s the Milennium Falcon?
2] How big would the 1st & 2nd Death Stars be?
January 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
They’re also missing all the Men in Black hardware.
Pity…
January 17th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
If you like that, you’ll love http://merzo.net/
January 17th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
The creator has a website - http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison.xhtml
Has this chart and another available for download in various formats.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
This is the nerd thread.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Phil,
Our oh-so-shiny Serenity is listed on http://www.merzo.net/10ppm.htm
January 17th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Fun fact: the Yamato is the only ship on the map to be BOTH a wet-navy vessel AND a between-galaxies cosmo battleship!
January 17th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Where’s the Milennium Falcon?
Open the image in a paint program and color one pixel white. There’s the Falcon.
January 17th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I thought it was pretty obvious why planetoid-class vessels (Death Star, Dahak, etc.) weren’t listed: they’re too freaking big. Similarly, vessels from non-TV or movie continuities are probably ignored because of the difficulty of finding images to represent them. Why non-American continuities are ignored (where’s the Macross, for example? Or even the Red Dwarf?), I don’t know.
January 17th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
What about RED DWARF? Not the largest or the most fashionable, but at over 6 Million years, certainly worth a nod!!!
January 17th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
While you’re at it, color in a pixel for the TARDIS. It deserves a nod as well.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Love the site all. Wish I were going to this year’s TAM in Vegas, but alas, school and finances hold me back. Anyway, THERE IS NOTHING AT ALL FROM THE STARGATE UNIVERSE IN THAT POSTER!!!!!!
January 17th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Nor is there anything from the Aliens universe. I can’t imagine them including Lexx and Galaxy quest but neither of the ships from one of the most famous scifi movies series of all time.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
It would be a hell of a lot more than one pixel if you base it on how big it is on the inside.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
The guy’s website has several pages, representing several magnitudes of scale. All of the ships you’ve mentioned (except maybe the Tardis) are there, including the Death Star, and several much larger vessels. In fact, I believe there is a page that includes the Ringworld.
-Paul
January 17th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Jupiter II?, The Liberator from Blakes Seven? or the Heart of Gold?
January 17th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Ah, I see that the website I was thinking of was the one Reuben linked to.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
[…] Here’s a nice picture comparing starship sizes from different SciFi movies and TV shows. Thanks to Phil the Bad Astronomer for pointing it out. […]
January 17th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
“They make a serious error in saying that the USS Discovery of 2001: A Space Odyssey is 98.75 meters long, while the Alexei Leonov from 2010 is 102 meters in length. Both Clarke’s novel and the film establish that the Leonov is short and squat compared to the Discovery.”
I thought the same thing.
If you see the movie 2010, when Discovery and Leonov link up, you see that Leonov is little more than half the length of Discovery (the AE-35 is folded down to accomedate it).
IIRC, in the novel, Discovery is supposed to be slender and 100 meters long.
Leonov is squat and 50 (or 30, gotta check) meters long.
Anyway, I’m very impressed by the appearence of the Executor. About seventeen and a half kilometers long! Good grief, I AM a sci-fi geek!
I would wonder how the TARDIS interior stands against all of these….
January 17th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
OH EM GEE!!! I WANT ONE… OF EACH!!!
January 17th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I’d like to get something like this for a whole wall in my room.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
What, no SDF-1? Lame!
January 17th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Darn, JSW…you beat me to the TARDIS joke
Rob
January 17th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
We should’ve know the BA would’ve been a Browncoat sympathizer!
January 17th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
aww too bad it doesn’t have the DYSON sphere from Star Trek.. it has the circumference of earth’s orbit. (theoretically if a sphere that big was made, every part of the inside of the sphere would get equal sunlight and near infinite energy can be utilized from the star… apparently they didn’t account for solar flares…
January 17th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I don’t know, the Deathstar is nice and all, but Rommie’s got about as much firepower as the rest of the poster combined…
January 17th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Well, “everything is relative” according to a famous swiss physicist.
So what does “length” mean when those ships travel at light speed ? Zero length. And most of those ships can travel fater than light… negative length ?
January 17th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Too bad the “Perry Rhodan” SF series is not a TV show yet… some ships in there are quite large.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:33 am
What about Muni Mula* from The Ruff & Reddy Show (twenty years before there was even a Deathstar)? Jus’ kiddin’.
*aluminum spelt backwards
January 18th, 2007 at 1:33 am
To antaresrichard: I thought it was called Muin Imula.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:31 am
I think we have a little way to go with our Space Involvement. We are still way behind the ‘Henry Ford’ stage in development, when you see just how puny the Space Shuttle is. Have you found it yet? Try above that monster from Star Wars, Gal. Emp. ‘Executor’ class.
I, too, wondered how the ‘Tardis’ would be represented, given that its interior is larger than its outside dimensions would have us believe. Or for that matter, the Stargate itself.
I guess they don’t really count as they are not really spaceships in the sense that they don’t have to physically transport their makers etc., but rather teleporting, by way of molecular breakdown, transmission and re-assembling.
But those posters really are something else! Quite fascinating. Are they available in book form? If not, when?
(And what about the Planet that the Little Prince lived on? Does it qualify?)
Ivan.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:39 am
“aww too bad it doesn’t have the DYSON sphere from Star Trek.. ”
The link that Reuban provides has it, in the catagory of “BIG”.
The ringworld from the Halo series is there too.
“I guess they don’t really count as they are not really spaceships in the sense that they don’t have to physically transport their makers etc., but rather teleporting, by way of molecular breakdown, transmission and re-assembling.”
I don’t think that’s how the TARDIS works. More like that it moves along dimensions, though in an odd manner.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:22 am
A Dyson sphere, as a rigid entity, is intrinsically unstable. Think about it - one tiny little movement off-centre, and the gravitational attraction to the star becomes stronger on one side than the other. This starts a positive feedback loop that ends when the sphere contacts the star and is destroyed.
What Dyson actually proposed was many small platforms in independent but coordinated orbits, to make use of the full emitted energy of a star.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:35 am
Curves for Dyson sphere (don’t start a technical argument on why a Dyson sphere won’t work on a thread discussing sci-fi starships, by the way), Death Star, etc in the background would have been nice.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Together with a colleague I just guessed how big the death star would be. Obviously, we are geeks. I was closer. Haha, my colleague is such a fool!
January 18th, 2007 at 7:02 am
I could be wrong, but I think this image predates Firefly (and the new Galactica etc.)
Yeah, it’s pretty old.
Why do people go on about Serenity? God that was crap.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Magnum: Crap? CRAP??? Are you cuckoo?????
Ah, but in all probability, it’s also closer to the way society would actually develop in a post space environment. China and the West are merging as we speak. SO there!!!
Gary 7
January 18th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Obviously, the Dyson sphere aliens used subspace oscillation dampers and anti-graviton flux capacitors to keep their solid-shell construction stable.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:01 am
What about the Eagles from Space:1999?
January 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am
@ Nails67:
merzo.net has those on the 1x page, far right (below the Farscape and Alien ships).
68 meters long
January 18th, 2007 at 9:23 am
“Nigel Depledge Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 5:22 am
A Dyson sphere, as a rigid entity, is intrinsically unstable. Think about it - one tiny little movement off-centre, and the gravitational attraction to the star becomes stronger on one side than the other. This starts a positive feedback loop that ends when the sphere contacts the star and is destroyed.”
Uh, right that it is unstable, wrong about the positive feedback. The gravitational attraction of the hollow sphere balances at every point - the part you are closest too attracts stronger, but it is always exactly balanced by the greater proportion of the shell that is farther away. The reason that this is unstable is that once in motion, there is nothing to *stop* the star from colliding with the shell.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:35 am
You’re my hero. I mean, I’m already a fan of your logical thinking and no BS writing, but anyone who references Firefly, one of the coolest shows ever destroyed by a clueless network, is definitely alright in my book.
Maybe if Joss had made a few references to the legendary “President George Bush” or explained the fallacy of global warming, Fox would have appreciated the show more.
January 18th, 2007 at 10:41 am
What about the United Galaxies Sanitation Patrol cruiser? How could something that important be left out?????
http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/quark/galery1/quark21.jpg
January 18th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
A great site!! What about Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds 3 & 5 though? Indeed I’d love to see all the Gerry Anderson ships included.
Thanks for the heads up Phil.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Thanks, Ozprof, for verifying that I wasn’t the only one thinking about Quark’s ship (not the Ferengi, the other one).
Plus, someone mentioned Perry Rhodan a while back…why not E.E. Doc Smith’s ships as well?
For that matter….Dark Star anyone?
Oh, what the heck, Salvage 1!
January 18th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
If I recall correctly, the giant cylindrical ship in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Rama, was 50km long and 20km in diameter.
Since 1999, there has been an ongoing speculation that a movie based on the novel is about to be produced with Morgan Freeman in the cast. According to IMDB.com, such a movie will not be out until at least 2009.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Mine is bigger than yours…combined
Star Wars
Galactic Empire
Executor Class
17484 meters
Battlestar Galactica
12 Colonies of Man
Columbia Class
1265 meters
Battlestar Galactica
Cylon Empire
Base Star
1768 meters (approximate)
January 18th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Thomas Siefert Says: “To antaresrichard: I thought it was called Muin Imula.”
Only in England.
- Jack
January 18th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Blake Stacey Says: “They make a serious error in saying that the USS Discovery of 2001: A Space Odyssey is 98.75 meters long”
and
Grand Lunar Says: “IIRC, in the novel, Discovery is supposed to be slender and 100 meters long.”
and
Rob Says: “A great site!! What about Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds 3 & 5 though? Indeed I’d love to see all the Gerry Anderson ships included.”
If you will permit me a shameless commercial plug, there is a reference book for all of these (and about 70 more). It’s called “Spaceship Handbook” and it is now back in print after a year away. For more info, click on my name at the top.
To answer the question on Discovery, in the movie the length was 363 feet long (110 meters), which is, coincidentally, the same length as the Saturn V moon rocket. In some of the early versions, the length was listed as long as 700 feet (213 meters). For the book, we scaled the ship length off of the image of a Pod emerging from the Pod bay. There are plenty of shots of those with people standing next to them for scale.
BTW, the drawings in the book are some of the most complete and detailed of the ship. They were done with the review and approval of Fred Ordway and Simon Atkinson.
And for Rob, Thunderbirds 1, 3 and 5 are detailed with drawings. TB 2 and 4 are described, but they are not spaceships.
- Jack
January 19th, 2007 at 12:32 am
John Powell said:
“Uh, right that it is unstable, wrong about the positive feedback. The gravitational attraction of the hollow sphere balances at every point - the part you are closest too attracts stronger, but it is always exactly balanced by the greater proportion of the shell that is farther away. The reason that this is unstable is that once in motion, there is nothing to *stop* the star from colliding with the shell.”
I stand corrected.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:24 am
I didn’t think Thunderbird 1 was a spaceship either?
And surely there should be Pixel or two for the infinitely improbable Heart Of Gold?
January 19th, 2007 at 7:33 am
What? No mothership from ‘Close Encounters’?
Infidels!!!
And how about the ship from ‘Childhood’s End’? That would be cool to see.
I have to go now.
Staples is having a sale on pocket protectors.
Live long, and prosper.
msmith40
January 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
> Dr.Goulu Says:
>January 17th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
>Well, “everything is relative†according to a famous swiss physicist.
>So what does “length†mean when those ships travel at light speed ? Zero length. And most >of those ships can travel fater than light… negative length ?
Cool. They all appear to be travel backwards!
Actually, they would all glow like mad things due to the Cherenkov radiation. Never thought of that before.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
To Jack Hagety re comment to Thomas Siefert, (hi both), not ‘only in England’, but to the contrary, only in America, or more precisely, USA, is it spelt without the second ‘i’. The rest of the world follows the longer version, though I’m sure the Canadians could be excused if they are ambivalent.
Ivan.
January 20th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Nigel, the situation you described does apply to the Ringworld, so I understand. Which is why Niven had to retcon attitude jets on the thing.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:49 am
I once saw a chart like this that included ships from the “Honorverse”, I’ll have to dig around to see if I can find it…
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
Freespace should be in there
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 am
Votes to the bad guy’s Worldship in Andromeda (with its own SUN in the center), and the bad guy’s ship in Independence Day (a quarter the mass of the moon…?).
And by the way, when they blow up the alien mothership in the latter with a simple nuclear device (I guess it just triggered their atmosphere or something), isn’t all that crap hitting the earth the equivalent of massive planetary bombardment? Aren’t we all going to roast, not to mention asphyxiate should we survive the heat?
But I think the biggest ships out there will turn out to be the Magellanic Clouds, which obviously are under their own power. Beat that.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
Years ago…I got in trouble at high school debating too loudly in the library on whether the Battle Star Galatica could beat the USS Enterprise in a stand up fight!
The debate was unresolved and we all got 2 days detention!
Yes….too geeky by far!
January 24th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
>>I don’t think that’s how the TARDIS works. More like that it moves along dimensions, though in an odd manner.
Actually the TARDIS is a Transdimensional Construct, with a default gray-cabinet exterior, and an exterior dimensional size that is essentially near-inifite. It is in many respects, a microuniverse of its own. Technologically wise, it is near-indestructable; you need technological equivalents (something that can effect it on its level,) to do any sort of damage to it. The way the Original Series suggests, you’d probably need a supernova typer explosion (with the TARDIS at the center,) to destroy it.
As for movement, this is accomplished via access into the 5th Dimension (or as the show calls it, the Spacio-Temporal Vortex, Space-Time Vortex, or just simply, the Vortex.) A TARDIS dematerializes into the Vortex, traverses through it, and rematerializes into another spacio-temporal point.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I must be half asleep…
I meant: an interior dimensional size that is essentially near-infinite.
January 24th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
This site has a whole heap: http://www.merzo.net/
January 24th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Oops, I missed the post near the top of the comments.
March 10th, 2007 at 5:29 am
ok, for Pat Harris, the galactica would kick ass.
for Magnum, burn in hell.
as for everyone else, you all seem to be complainign about whats NOT on the poster, as to what is.
i know barely 1/5th of the ships on that chart, namely the starwars, independence day, firefly, battlestar galactica, starship troopers and 2001: a space odesy.
but this chart is a work of art, i soo want a wall sized one 4 my room.
and as everyone is saying whats not on, wheres the deadaelus, prometheus, daniel jackson-class, o’niel-class, alkesh, F-302 and deathgliders? in actual fact, more stargate ships flat!
September 13th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
what about the ori & wraith hive ships & other ships of the stargate universe! who are the largest ships of all.
if the wraith hive ships is 13times larger then the Odyssey? there the second largest then who is the biggest?