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The 10 Worst Spaceships of All Time


By Jon Gutierrez

If we?ve learned anything from “Rocket Man,” it?s that not everyone should be allowed into space. Or to make movies, for that matter. However, the combination of giant explosions and possible death by suffocation make even the worst space vessels kind of interesting. Having already seen the best, here are the 10 worst we?ve seen.

10. B-Wing Fighter, Star Wars
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It?s hard enough flying against a swarm of TIE fighters in an regular old X-Wing, so why would you want to fly a spinning rotating ship that?s hard to even figure out how to get into it?

9. The Black Fortress, Krull
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If you were the most powerful being in the universe, how would you travel from planet to planet? I?m willing to bet you wouldn?t do it in giant space rock castle that slams into wherever it?s going and is practically made of spikes. Although it admittedly, it is roomy in there.

8. Bajoran Lightship, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
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There?s a reason people don?t travel around in sailboats anymore?unless you like going mad and drinking your own urine, being stranded at sea is a pretty horrible way to die. Now, replace sailboats in that sentence with ?spaceship with no engine? and ?at sea? with ?in the airless depths of space? and you can see just what a bad idea Sisko?s space sailboat is.

7. Mork’s Egg, Mork & Mindy

When you think of something strong and stable to base a ship on, I?m betting an egg isn’t in your top ten. Heck, it?s probably not in your ?complete list of possible candidates.? But apart from the stupidity of basing your ships on the least sturdy member of the dairy group, don?t forget this thing also introduced us to Robin Williams, thus fueling the cocaine industry for the entire 80s and single-handedly leading to the success of Reaganomics.

6. Tin Man, Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the spaceships I get into to not be alive. (It?s too much like crawling around inside a giant fat person.) But if I had to travel in a living something, I?d prefer one that wasn?t so clingy that it had to bond mentally with it?s host. That what dames are for.

5. Max the Trimaxian Drone Ship, Flight of the Navigator

Getting kidnapped by an alien ship is never fun, but try being trapped inside one run by a maniacally hyper Paul Ruebens robot. Anal probing would be a pleasant diversion.

4. U.S.S. Cygnus, The Black Hole

Hmm. How can you make space travel?already not the safest activity?even more dangerous? How about making your ship entirely of stained glass? Oh, and why not put the transport tubes in glass tubes on the outside of the ship? Thank goodness there are never any hunks of rocks floating around in space that could possibly damage such a fragile vessel.

3. Valley Forge, Silent Running

If you wanted to preserve the last plant life on Earth, where would you put it? Oh, of course, in a spaceship out by Jupiter. Oh, and make sure the stuff?s all in giant greenhouse domes so they can get plenty of sunlight from, er, the blackness of space.

2. John Worfin’s Ship, Buckaroo Banzai
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Can a spaceship that never makes it into space actually be considered a space ship? What?s worse, it was supposed to teleport too, making it a double failure. It?s hard to tell what?s more to blame: the fact that it was designed by a mad half-Italian/half-Alien (played by John Lithgow, naturally) or that it was built in New Jersey.

1. Pocket Rocket, Fantastic Four
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The ship that first carried the Fantastic Four into space only managed to make one flight before it crashed and the lack of cosmic ray shielding also caused the crew to mutate like crazy. I mean sure, they became a force for good, but did no one hold Reed Richards accountable for his incredible failure to hold to any kind of safety code? Next on his invention list: a car that shoots lethal radiation into your eyes every time you brake.