23 coolest onscreen spaceships

Coolest Feature: This trillion-dollar vessel echoes the raw functionality of the earlier ships from the Alien franchise. But, it also features a beautiful bespoke lifeboat for company woman Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), complete with a hologram picture window and an extremely precise medical pod.

Coolest Feature: There are two basic species of fictional spaceship: vessels that are fantastical, and vessels defined by a rough attempt at realism. And then, there's the main fighter jet featured in the all-but-forgotten late-'90s series, Space: Above and Beyond. The SA-43 could be straight out of Top Gun, except that the ship's nose makes it look like a hammerhead shark.

Coolest Feature: The spinning deck of this exploration vessel is perfect for maintaining a solid jogging regimen. Regular aerobic exercise is necessary on deep-space missions, especially when the only other onboard activities are playing chess with a computer and being killed by a computer.

Coolest Feature: The all-encompassing size of this Super Star Destroyer makes it one of the most imposing ships in sci-fi. But, the designers didn't scrimp on the interior. If you're the lucky commander of this vessel, you'll get your very own meditation chamber, complete with a manual open-sesame door function that can create hours of fun.

Coolest Feature: The sheer WTF wrongness of this giant floating space cube — suggesting Stalinist architecture gone cosmic and IKEA packaging gone dystopian — makes it one of the scariest visuals in the Trek universe.

Coolest Feature: Oooh, the lights! So pretty!

Coolest Feature: Like many of the vessels on this list, the Serenity is a piece of junk. But, it's a dependable piece of junk, with character to burn. The niftiest aspect of the Serenity is the pair of smaller shuttles that can detach from the main body of the vessel, one of which is leased as a living space by glamorous Companion Inara.

Coolest Feature: Um, it's the moon. Reboot, please?

Coolest Feature: The decaying ship that dominates the Rocket Town skyline is the perfect metaphor for the broken dreams of wannabe-astronaut Cid Highwind. But, there's nothing metaphorical about the Huge Materia inside of the rocket, which can only be snagged if you enter the correct code. Huge Materia is so powerful.

Coolest Feature: The spaceship that provided the main setting for the BBC cult classic sci-fi spoof is infinitely huge, with 12 seasons of plot lurking in its bowels. However, the most enjoyable aspect of the Dwarf's operation is the ship's tendency to resurrect dead crewmates. If you're lucky, you can stay on the Dwarf forever. Forever...forever...

Coolest Feature: Like the Borg cubes, the ships used by the mysterious antagonists of Babylon 5 are freaky because they don't look the way spaceships are supposed to look. Unlike the Borg, though, the Shadows traveled in vessels that looked eerily organic — your worst spider nightmare reimagined as a star-hopping mega-ship.

Coolest Feature: Just like its namesake back on earth, the biggest space cruise ship is absolutely invinciBLACK HOLE, BLACK HOLE!

Coolest Feature: Bounty Hunter Boba Fett (and his clone-daddy Jango before him) modified this transport ship with a nasty array of assault weapons. But, the most interesting feature of Slave I is that it rotates upright after it takes off. Why? Because it looks cool! This is a DeLorean, if a DeLorean came with enough artillery to end a Star Destroyer.

Coolest Feature: An entire city resides inside this massive extraterrestrial ship — SDF stands for ''Super Dimension Fortress.'' But, the size isn't the impressive thing. What makes the Macross awesome is that, when attacked, it transforms into a giant attack-robot with aircraft-carrier arms.

Coolest Feature: The SOL is used to conduct the most important experiment in the history of science: testing the effects of horrible movies on the human mind. The onboard movie theater might not get artsy foreign films or big Hollywood blockbusters, but hey, at least the movies are free!

Coolest Feature: Sleek as an X-Wing, but as expansive as the Enterprise, the Normandy is the perfect ship for a sci-fi franchise that remixes the genre into something intriguingly new. Still, the best part of the Normandy is the crew: an opinionated gang of soldiers and mercenaries who don't mind engaging in a little intra-ship fraternization between missions.

Coolest Feature: A commercial towing vessel, the Nostromo looks like what would happen if you fired the worst part of the dirtiest city in America into outer space. But, if you like scary corridors filled with steam and dripping sewer pipes, then this ship is for you.

Coolest Feature: The prototypical pop-art starship can make the journey from the earth to the moon in just a few hours, thanks to a nuclear-reactor engine and a hefty dose of comic-book science.

Coolest Feature: X-Wing Schmex-Wing. When it comes to the climax of the first Star Wars, all the savvy backseat astronauts drool over this Imperial vessel customized for the Dark Lord of the Sith, with its iconic bent-wing design. Vader could've ended the Rebellion single-handedly with this ship, if not for a sucker-punch assault from Han Solo.

Coolest Feature: The Galactica feels less like a grand exploration vessel and more like a World War II-era submarine. But, the ship's age is also its best strength — unlike more up-to-date ships, the Galactica never networked its computers, leaving it impervious to Cylon cyber-attack. Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways.

Coolest Feature: The starship at the center of Douglas Adams' absurdist sci-fi romp contains an Infinite Improbability Drive, which runs on quantum theory and allows the ship to be everywhere and nowhere (and also everything and nothing) all at once. My head hurts.

Coolest Feature: The Trek universe has updated the saucer-and-dual-engine ship configuration throughout various spin-offs — and, most memorably, added in a holodeck in The Next Generation — but nothing beats watching the warp engines fire up on the original Constitution-class vessel.

Coolest Feature: The matched set of gun turrets. That symmetry-breaking cockpit. The dejarik (holochess) set in the lounge. The moan of the malfunctioning warp drive, which sounds like the mournful cry of a lovelorn emu. Seriously, what isn't cool about Han Solo's iconic smuggling ship?