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With the space shuttle program about to be retired, we need a new class of crewed ships for space exploration. But Congress may never cough up the money to build them. Luckily, science fiction teaches us that anything can be a spaceship: an old airplane, a World War II battleship, a fairground ride... or even some junkyard debris, as Andy Griffith shows in this clip. Click through for our roundup of the best repurposed and recycled spaceships.
With the space shuttle program about to be retired, we need a new class of crewed ships for space exploration. But Congress may never cough up the money to build them. Luckily, science fiction The Vulture, from Salvage 1. Andy Griffith is "a junkman with a dream," in this ABC TV movie that became a series. He decides to build a spaceship from junk and fly it to the moon, so he can reposess all the crap that NASA left up there and sell it back to NASA (or someone else) for a profit. He enlists the aid of a retired astronaut and an "explosive" fuel expert, and together they pull off the impossible. Is it legal, someone asks him. "I don't know!" he replies cheerfully. Here's another clip:
The Yamato, from Starblazers. The Earth is being devastated by radiation bombs from the evil Gamilons (or Gamilas in Japanese). The Earth's space fleet is ruined and outclassed. There's only one hope left: travel to Iscandar and get a miracle cure from a glowy princess. But there's no spaceship to make the journey. So the surviving humans find the ruined World War II Japanese battleship Yamato, and retrofit her into a spaceship. For years, I wondered why the Yamato looks so boat-like. Then I re-watched some of the DVDs and found out why. 
The Thunder Road, from Explorers. Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and some other guy learn how to build a device that creates a space-worthy bubble, from their dreams. Using this for protection, they build a spaceship out of an old Tilt-A-Whirl amusement-ride seat, washing machine windows, a spare tire, old TV sets, and a "proceed with caution" sign. Then they actually fly their home-made contraption up into space and meet up with aliens, led by Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. (Thanks to Sherilyn for the tip!)
The 747, from Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harry Harrison. Possibly the silliest book by Harrison, who also wrote the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill The Galactic Hero books. In this parody of golden age science fiction, three guys and a girl are playing around with a home-made particle accelerator. They put some cheese in the accelerator's target area and create a new element, cheddite. It has the ability to move people immense distances across space, so Chuck, Jerry, Sally and John turn an old 747 jet into a spaceship and fly across the galaxy. They find themselves having to save the galaxy from an evil race known as the Loathesome Lortonoi. (Thanks to Alan for the suggestion.)
The Barnyard ship, from The Astronaut Farmer. Billy Bob Thornton gave up on being an astronaut to go home to his farm, so he decides to build his own rocket in a barn and fly it into space. He doesn't really build it out of junk, however, so I'm not sure if it belongs in this listing.
The Madball ship, from Madballs. This is a cartoon tying in with a gross-out candy from the 1980s. On a planet where everybody is a ball with arms and legs, the evil Badballs want to ban rock'n'roll. The bastards. So the Madballs build their own spaceship out of parts they find by dumpster-diving (they literally find the final crucial piece in a trash can.) And then they fly to Earth, where they can have all the rock'n'roll adventures they want, and never be heard from again.
Rickety Rocket. A group of stereotyped black teenagers create their own spaceship out of garbage they find, and they use it to solve mysteries. It looks just like Speed Buggy and has a similar origin. The cartoon aired as part of the Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Show. Typical storyline: A robot art critic in a top hat (classy!) is stealing priceless objects and shrinking them using a matter transformer. But he turns out not to be a robot after all (boring!).
Comments
Spacecruiser Yamato was the show that brought me to anime. I even have a book of original animation cels. I thought the idea was the coolest thing I had ever seen. And that main gun! Damned cool!
What? No mention of the Winnebago from Spaceballs?
@Skunky: Oh shoot. I knew I was forgetting something....
V'GER from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
You forgot the phonex from "Star Trek: First Contact." The first faster than light ship was made out of an old missle.
I love Explorers.
I have nothing else to add.
What about that one from that movie with the voice of Drew Barrymore in it?
@NefariousNewt: Deslock still ranks as one of my all-time favorite villains.
MADBALLS!?! You guys are good.
Explorers is a great movie made in a lost art of great childrens movies with high concepts and respect for the audience.
oh, and my favorite Repurposed Spaceship...
[www.negrospaceprogram.com]
Skylab.
Originally intended as a Saturn V 'wet workshop' fuel tank, with mesh floors and other fittings for use by astronauts once the fuel had been burned and the tank refilled with a breathable atmosphere - the underlying rocket (itself left over from the Apollo moon programme) proved sufficiently powerful to launch this repurposed fuel tank directly into space, with no fuel inside.
Still, this space station's sun-shield and one of its large solar panels got damaged on launch, requiring extensive repair work and a big, reflective sheet strapping to its exterior.
Big, orbiting hunk o' junk - and it was real!
@Git Em SteveDave: Titan AE...let us never speak of it again.
@CargoCult: I remember seeing pics of Skylab as a kid (I was born the year it was retired) and wondering why they would put a helicopter in space...
The Delta Flyer from Star Trek: Voyager was made out of spare parts, and the episode 'Drive' from season 7 shows how it was the Mach 5 car of the space lanes.
Wow Salvage 1 was real? I always thought it was a fever dream from my youth.
@Garrison Dean: "Explorers is a great movie made in a lost art of great childrens movies with high concepts and respect for the audience."
I don't think I could have said that better. It has also has aged pretty well.. unlike a lot of 80's Sci-fi.
The Thunder Road is from a John Varley novel of the same name.
And while we're making suggestions, would Farscape-1 technically count?
All it was before Moya was a rocket-powered experimental lifting-body. But it was eventually outfitted with Leviathan sourced tech for propulsion and controls. (What exactly was never fully explained, I suppose it basically used components from a transport pod, since it was alluded they and Leviathan's were materially similar.)
And BSG's Blackbird?- which was basically bits from dead Viper's and engines of civilian origin under a new spaceframe and skin.
In a terrific short, A Grand Day Out, Wallace and Gromit build a spaceship out of wood and sheet metal and deck out the bridge to look like a living room. Why? To travel to the moon for a snack. After all, the moon is made of Wallace's favorite thing...cheese!
The original Millenium Falcon design model was made using junk the guys at ILM found around the shop and in their garages at home. Supposedly there's a bunch of hood ornaments on it and a hubcap.
Ok, not technically what you were looking for, but it meets the spirit of the article. :P
I never knew so many big names were in Explorers, I'm going to have to rewatch that.
@Posthaus: Yeah it really does age well. Everything leadng up to the actual reveal of the alien is as good as it gets in sci-fi, childrens movie or not. Even as a kid I didn't mind the alien, but always felt it paled in comparison to the mystery and wonder that led up to it.
"Flight of the Navigator" was another good one, but still a bit more kids movie than this. They dealt with real Sci-Fi Nut meat... Math, physics, time travel, now kids are all magic.
The Blackbird from BSG.
Actually, the John Varley book is "Red Thunder" and so is the ship. They built it out of railroad tank cars.
@dantebays: @SeattleVlad: Yeah I thought Thunder Road was from the Boss song.
What, no Satellite of Love from "Mystery Science Theater 3000"?
@Garrison Dean:
The aliens revealed were a little weird watching it as a kid- and it felt even more aawkward when you find out they were only kids themselves. Now they feel a bit anti-climatic, but I don't think it spoils the picture.
"Flight of the Navigator" is another great example too, although it suffers a bit compared to "Explorers" because it does feel a little dated at times and it's defeintely skewed toward a younger audience (when they aren't talking the math and science.) But it's something I'd probably show to my kids [some day] well before I'd show Harry Potter.
Maybe it's just me, but films in that time had a bit more innocence, even when they delved into more serious subject matter.
i'm sorry but we will have to censor the comment by avatar posthaus, we do not acknowledge the existance of harry pooter on this site.-blurey
There was a kids show called Alphabet Soup, a sort of super-urban version of Sesame Street, that had a recurring sketch about some kids and a ventriloquist dummy flying through space and time in a rocket made of garbage, if I am remembering correctly.
Serenity was rescued from a junk yard.
In Futurama, The Awesome Express Ship made from a wagon ("There's a crack in the hull here. That could cause explosive decompression." "Put a sticker on it.") [Also, The Planet Express Ship & the ship pwned by the Enterprise crew.]
In the old Battlestar Galactica, a viper & a cylon ship is hacked together to save a pregnant woman, marooning Starbuck. (Yeah, not the best episode.)
Would anything from the Transformers planet Junkion count?
In "The Doomsday Device" (classic Trek), Scotty makes a useless hulk workable enough to draw fire away from the Enterprise...
Say, I wonder why I spent Valentine's Day with my cats.
The Draconians upgraded Buck Rogers' dead space shuttle was upgraded after it was defrosted.
Likewise, in "Red Dwarf" Starbug 1 was upgraded by rogue symbionts.
Oh, and Dr. Who's Tardis is another rescue from the junk heap.
And so was the spaceship from the first book of "Mission Earth."
Wow. Looks like I should've taken Shatner's advice a bit more seriously.
Of course, the SDF-1 ("Robotech") is clearly the Rocky Balboa of decrepit ships made functional.
"Spaceman Spiff" is the MacGyver of sci fi: Calvin converted his cardboard spaceship into both a transmogrifier and a time machine using only a magic marker!
Let's see Kaylee or Scotty or Q pull THAT one off.
OMG, I can't believe I forgot about the rocket from Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man."
I must be slipping.
You forgot "Outerscope 1," a show that terrified me as a small child. (The homemade spaceship ran on yeast.)
@stray: I don't think that was actually constructed from junk, in the show's continuity, such as it is. It was built by the Gizmonic Institute.
I know, it's just a show and I should really just relax.
I think ALL of you people have WAAAAAAAAAYYYY..too much time on your hands.......
I'm not sure if this would really count, but what about "Red Planet?" Old Soviet-made mars probe gets stripped down, powered up with a futuristic power cell from a crazed robot and flown into orbit like an escape pod. Pretty good use of junk.... just like reusing Sojourner as a walkie-talkie :)
I'm pretty sure Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo" was built from junk.
I remember watching Starblazers as a kid and loving it. As I got older I suspected it might have had a subtle political message. The Earth is being nuked with "Planet Bombs" The only solution is to resurrect the Japanese navys super battleship and turn it into a Spaceship/Battleship/Carrier to save humanity from the radioactivity. Like I said it's very subtle.
@Skunky: you might be old enough to know, that most of those weren't parody's like Spaceballs was. To me that disqualifies the winnebago.
I vaguely remember salvage 1. I had no idea that was andy griffith in it though.
Holy crap, I had forgotten about Rickety Rockett.
The Thunder Road IS named for the Bruce Springsteen song, the Third Kid (TM) said it in the movie.
I loved Salvage 1. When I heard about Google sponsoring the prize for a commercial trip to the moon, Andy Griffith was all I could think about.
@oldandintheway: You're clearly reading the wrong blog, dude.
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