Passengers, the newest sci-fi movie that was recently released in the United States, has a spaceship at the centre of the plot. The spaceship, Avalon, transports 5,000 people at half the light speed and the passengers go into hibernation for 120 years. The movie stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, who are on a journey to the planet, Homestead II, which is colonised by humans.
Also read: Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic unveils new spaceship
During the journey, the protagonists accidentally wake up 90 years early and the story delves into how they tackle issues arising out of love, the long journey and the malfunctioning spaceship.
The Avalon spacecraft is powered by eight nuclear fusion reactors, which can run autonomously and the ship creates artificial gravity by rotating.
Though the movie got mixed reviews, it has us reminiscing about films that featured spaceships and the possibility of human space travel. Here are five other fictional spaceships in movies that show the power of human imagination:
USS Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey
The spaceship Discovery One was first seen in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and later in Peter Hyams' 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
This ship had a thermonuclear propulsion system. The 460-feet vehicle was powered by nuclear plasma drive. It featured a separate crew quarters, flight controls, small auxiliary craft and instrumentation.
There were moon-like gravitational conditions in the crew's centrifuge. But the piloting, navigation and other tasks were in zero-gravity conditions.
It also had three compartments where astronauts hibernated. The spaceship was partly operated by the HAL 9000 (heuristic algorithmic computer) artificial intelligence.
Millennium Falcon from Star Wars universe
The spaceship Millennium Falcon was first seen in Star Wars in 1977 and later in The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
The starship gained a kind of star status since it was commanded by smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee first mate, Chewbacca.
Millennium Falcon was a Corellian YT-1300f light freighter, which featured several advanced modifications, like hyperdrive, weapons and shield. The spaceship was the "fastest ship in the galaxy" in the Star Wars universe.
It had three deflector shield generators. The ship's source of power was a Quadex power core. It featured landing gear, starboard ring corridor, the boarding ramp, cockpit access tunnel, gun turret ladder, secret compartments and the forward hold.
USS Enterprise from Star Trek
The USS Enterprise with registry NCC-1701 was seen in the original Star Trek series and was reconceptualised in the Star Trek of 2009. The 288.646-metre ship was powered by Dilithium-focused matter/anti-matter reaction chamber.
The ship had a crew of 430 people, 14 science labs, an observation deck, a massive lower deck that included main engineering, and a shuttle bay.
Its propulsion system included four dual Impulse Power Units and two Space Warp Propulsion Units. It featured a Deflector Shield Grid for its defence.
Its armaments included two electromagnetic launch Photon Torpedo tube and three Dual Phaser banks. Enterprise also featured a 7x7 man shuttlecraft as auxiliary craft.
USCSS Nostromo from Alien
Nostromo was a Lockmart CM 88B Bison M-Class starfreighter that was used as a commercial hauler between Thedus and Earth in the movie Alien.
The ship was 243.8 meters long, 164.6 meters wide and 72.5 meters high. It had an on-board artificial intelligence computer, MOTHER, which monitored the activities of the crew members when they went into hypersleep. It also piloted the ship.
The vehicle had industrial areas, a central eating area, a hypersleep chamber, a kitchen, a cockpit and an infirmary. This was a three-decked ship, where the first deck had areas for hypersleep, central eating, the medical and science lab and the cockpit.
The second deck was the passage between the first and the last. The last deck had a mining equipment and mechanics of the ship.
It was powered by three to four nuclear reactors. It featured a self-destruct system, where the core would overheat and the ship would be destroyed after 10 minutes.
USCSS Prometheus from Prometheus
This spacecraft, seen in Prometheus in 2012, was a space exploration vehicle. The ship could go faster than light and was the most advanced one in the movie.
The ship measured 130 metres in length, 48.75 metres in width and 36.5 metres in height. It was powered by nuclear fission generators, featuring ionised plasma drive. The ship had four nuclear-powered ion plasma engines for propulsion. These were capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) thrust hybrid vectoring in atmospheric and interstellar conditions.
The ship had a main control room that mapped out the specific details related to the ship and navigation. It also had 17 hypersleep chambers. It had independent advanced navigation systems and several sensors. Its armament included shotguns, pistols, flamethrowers and Weyland Storm Rifles.
The ship had 17 crew members. Since it was for exploration of space, it had a huge cargo space for 20 vehicles, which included five RT Series Group Transports, four ATV NR6 runabouts, two heavy mineral extractors, eight Class-A individual crew ejection pods and one Class-D crew escape module.
