The things we learned from making this video: Star Trek is the undisputed ruler of the spaceship turbulence world. There's not even any competition. You know you're watching Star Trek if people are being flung around like socks in a dryer. Also, you can always tell if there's about to be turbulence, because Brent Spiner starts his lunge a moment early. And good unstable-spaceship acting starts from the pelvis, like a rhumba, and then works its way up to your shoulders and arms. Thanks to Lauren Davis for research help.

Artist Jim Nichols has been painting scenes of spaceships and flying saucers for years, and he's even co-hosted a cable show called UFOAZ all about visitors from outer space. In 1980, Jim met with retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Wendelle Stevens who was researching UFOs, and this inspired him to pursue a career in UFO illustration. Most of his pieces are on sale at his website, which features six pages worth of prints. There's bound to be something in there you're interested it since he runs the gamut from a saucer hovering over a lone farmhouse in "Country Road," to Nazi spaceships in "World War II UFO."

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• Battlezone was developed in 1979 by Atari and released in 1980. Morgan Hoff at Atari was the lead designer, and Ed Rotberg served as the principal programmer. Both had worked on many of Atari's other classic games.
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• Battlezone was a tank simulator that gave you two joysticks, one for the left tread and one for the right, and a single button that fired your gun. You would drive all over an alien landscape, complete with an erupting volcano, and blast enemy tanks and spaceships while dodging simple geometric shapes.
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• In addition, the screen would "crack" when you were killed by an enemy, and would also play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture when you would enter your initials for the high score.
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• Battlezone incorporated many new design elements that hadn't been seen in coin-operated games before, like a persicope-like viewer and realistic (for the time) simulated tank driving. The game also featured a built-in step to allow shorter gamers to reach the periscope.
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• The game featured wire-frame vector graphics in black and white, but they overlaid red and green cellophane onto the monitor to make it look like the game actually had different colors. The radar and warning messages were in red, while the main graphics were in green.
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• Once the game was released, it was an instant hit. In fact, it became so popular that the United States Army approached Atari and had them design a version of the game that would train gunners on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Only two prototypes were produced that featured realistically modeled enemy helicopters, tanks, and other vehicles.
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• Ed Rotberg was so incensed that Atari was getting involved with the military, that he had several shouting matches with his bosses. He agreed only to stay on at Atari as long as he never had to work on another military project again.
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• Because players covered up most of the game with their face and body, other editions were designed like one without the periscope (because of concerns over hygiene as well, with everyone pressing their faces up against the viewer) and a cocktail table prototype.
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• Rumors persisted that you could drive up to the volcano, enter a secret passage, and then find and explore a castle. Also, people thought that if you continued driving straight for over an hour (!) you could eventually reach the mountains and find a tank factory that was building the enemy tanks. Sadly, neither were true.
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• Red Baron was a game released almost a year after Battlezone, featuring similar wire-frame graphics and gameplay except sit in a World War I biplane instead of a futuristic tank on an alien world. In fact, many Red Baron cabinets were just conversions of Battlezone units, and you could peel off the Red Baron stickers revealing the Battlezone artwork underneath.
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• Battlezone remained popular much longer than most games that came out at the same time, and several different versions of been produced over the years. The game was ported to just about every home and portable video game system, and there were multiplayer versions and sequels produced for PCs.
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• In Battlezone, the 1998 remake for PCs, they included an actual story. Meteors fall on the Earth in 1957, and the Americans and Soviets find a rare element inside them called bio-metal, which lets them build vehicles with special abilities. Of course, the Soviets and Americans use this ability to wage war across the solar system rather than better mankind.
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• Peter Hirschberg is an amazing computer animator and arcade owner who frequent makes 3D models of old arcade cabinets in his spare time. He contributed models to the retro-gaming documentary Chasing Ghosts, and you can check out his Battlezone and Tron models here. Keep in mind there are completely rendered in the computer, and are not photographs or filmed images.
  
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You might be wondering why the observation deck is so far away from the other building to its left, which is a visitor center. It's because Duggan and Morris see this not just as a building, but as a sort of real life table top in a still life painting. Doesn't it remind you of the fruit basket and vase you drew in middle school art class? The visitor center is actually called "the bowl."

You can see it really looks like a bowl here. The visitor center has a gallery, a cafe, and a shop. The observation tower is called "the lamp." Images by Duggan Morris Duggan Morris Architects main page via Designboom

Here's a closeup up the ship.

And here are a couple schematics from "anonymous."



Please do let this be from the upcoming X-Files movie. Or even better, some other movie that I haven't heard about yet.

UFO Reports Draw National Attention to Capitola [San Jose Mercury News]

John Berkey is one of those old-school concept artists whose work doesn't look hyper-realistic like Photoshop on steroids. He uses an old school smeary oils approach that look both futuristic and retro at the same time. Berkey has done numerous pieces of freelance futuristic artwork featuring ships in battle above our world and others, and also did some of the original concept and poster artwork for Star Wars.

The Chanel Pavilion recently made its Hong Kong debut and moves to Tokyo in April.

Zaha Hadid main page

Artist Greg deSantis has also created incredible concept models of a reimagined Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, amazing steampunk British tanks, space pirates boarding a ship through a still red-hot sliced open hole, and even scifi handguns that come complete with their own carrying case.

Sadly, the museum has disappeared and no longer offers models for sale. This is tragic, because these are probably some of the coolest scifi models we've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. We hope deSantis returns to making these one day, because those tanks would look awesome on our desk.

At only a $79 million dollar budget, a major studio could just buy this project out and turn it into a shot at box office gold. In the Hollywood version, the spacecraft would wake up a dormant alien being, long buried underneath the lunar surface, or they'd start a chain reaction that would cause the moon to break up into a billion pieces, which would begin raining down on the Earth. Then NASA would have to hire a maverick space jockey — Eric Bana? — to either deal with the alien menace, or the falling debris.

Or what if the moon turned out to be a deep space probe that's been orbiting the planet for eons? Silently biding its time. Then, a rude awakening comes in the form of us crashing things into it and the bot pilots running the probe try to send down big guns to mete out some stellar justice. It feels like the start of a bad Dimension Films plot, we know. But, there's probably a good idea buried in there somewhere. Just as long as it doesn't dislodge the moon from orbit and force us to watch the only good scene in The Time Machine again.

NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer [Yahoo News]

Image from the 1902 George Méliès film A Trip To The Moon.

According to Kotaku: Galactrix has an overarching storyline that ties all the puzzle battling together. In the far future, the entire galaxy is run by four mega corporations. It's not long before one of these corporations starts deadly experiments that go awry and threaten the existence of the universe. The player must puzzle battle these enemies of the universe and save us all.

We need more science fiction action that we can carry around in our pockets, so we say bring it on.

Our tour of the interwebs in search of Страху нет yielded the band Mumiy Troll, who have been playing music in Russia since 1981. We couldn't find hide nor hair of this song on the site, though. You can hear their entire new album played on their website if you're patient enough to endure their brain-melting powers of rock. Maybe this will spawn a whole slew of scifi music videos that tell an epic story. We can only hope! After all, we're tired of listening to Styx's Kilroy Was Here over and over again.

Burg has worked as a concept artist, storyboarder, and matte painter on everything from Buckaroo Banzai to Robot Jox, and has also worked with sci directors like Robert Zemeckis on Contact, and Paul Verhoeven on Starship Troopers. In fact, given that we're going into a Terminator-laden weekend, it's only fitting that he also worked on Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and the T2:3D theme park film.

Burg frequently puts sketches and computer artwork up on his blog for people to check out, and of this spaceport picture he had this to say:

I wanted to capture the feeling of a busy port at dawn, with numerous craft of different shapes and sizes coming and going. The enormous cubes — at least in my mind — contain portals that enable inter-dimensional travel to other worlds. Large ships circle the area, waiting for clearance from traffic control to proceed to their destinations — much like jumbo jets at a modern airport.

What's more insulting is a glance at the list of other entrants on the list, which will soon be boiled down to the nominees:

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• Evan Almighty: seriously, a bunch of CGI animals? Giant waves? We're weeping, on the inside. Doctor Doolittle had some similar effects, from what we remember. We love Steve Carell, but not as Neo Noah.
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• The Bourne Ultimatum: sure Matt Damon kicked some butt, but other than that chase across the rooftops and a car chase or two, the vfx didn't blow our pants off.
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• The Golden Compass: this movie got lost in the wake from the Harry Potter yacht, and the effects looked impressive, and a bit too Narnia-esque.
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• I Am Legend: we'll tip our hat to this one, since those desolate shots of an empty Manhattan are simply gorgeous, and the hordes of infected were pretty scary as well. Especially that shot where they're all huddled together the in dark. Yikes.
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• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: This is what happens when you marry a really shoddy story that's full of holes with a ton of CGI. A mess that looks fake and is ultimate unsatisfying. Like a bowl of wax fruit.
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• Transformers: decent effects, like the drawn-out Optimus Prime transformation and some of the slow-motion fights, but in the heat of most of these robo-battles, it was hard to tell what was going on. Something we keep hearing about this flick.
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• 300: We wanted this to capture more of the spirit of the Frank Miller graphic novel, but simply copying scenes from it didn't work. Sure, Gerard Butler was great, but at times this felt a bit goofy. Still, we'll admit the effects were the film, and not badly done.
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Sunshine, while you might not be the Academy's darling, you're certainly ours.

That is, unless it's a crashed spaceship, and the hapless pilot is desperately trying to figure out how to get the thing upright again before he freezes his ass off. Or maybe it's something he bought 50 years in the future at IKEA, and those are the instructions which haven't become any more readable with the passage of time. At least it looks like the power is still on inside.

What we like about this image is that it could be any, or even all of the above. Who's to say it isn't a futuristic flying ice research station from IKEA that's been turned sideways? Conceptual artist James Clyne manages to marry future tech with the desolate feeling of a distant icy landscape in the middle of nowhere, and keep us guessing at the same time.

You can check out more of his concept artwork at his website, but be sure to bundle up and drink warm beverages as you browse.

• Any vehicle from the Star Trek Universe: Dilithium Crystals. This is an element created just for Star Trek that powers everything from the U.S.S. Enterprise to a Klingon Bird of Prey. Dilithium had to be mined, just like we have to drill for oil, and could be hard to come by. Of course, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out the writers decided to just cheat and make it something that they could make synthetically, thereby killing any future "we're out of gas!" storylines.
• The Time-Traveling Delorean from Back to the Future: plutonium, gas, and/or garbage. Doc Brown's time-tripping Delorean actually has an engine that does run on gas, although when he came back from the future he'd converted the flux capacitor to run on a Mr. Fusion device, thereby eliminating the need for plutonium pellets for driving through the decades. Just toss some trash inside, and you're good to go.
• Anything in the Battlestar Galactica universe: Tylium. In the world of BSG, both Cylon and Human ships run off of a fictional ore called tylium. It's only found on certain planets, and has to be mined, just like dilithium crystals. But unlike the crystals, it also has to be refined and turned into a gasoline like substance. No idea what kind of mileage you get out of it, but it also powers their "faster than light" drives, so it must pack quite a punch.
• The TARDIS from Doctor Who: artificial black holes, radiation, life force... take your pick. The TARDIS in the world of Doctor Who looks like a giant blue phonebooth, and travels through both time and space. However it's actually a sentient being that draws its power from one of several different sources, depending on what season of the show you're watching. In the current incarnation of the show, the Doctor has to stop periodically near a space-time rift and suck up the leaking radiation in order to keep things going. A sort of interstellar pit stop, if you will. Photo by lizardian.
• The Spaceship Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: a cup of hot tea. The Heart of Gold ran on an infinite improbability drive that took it through "every point in the universe at once" when it was switched on. Not too shabby. All it took was an electronic brain and a good Brownian motion generator, like a cup of tea, and you're off. Probably the cheapest form of travel ever invented.
• Anything in Star Wars: your guess is as good as ours. While you sometimes see strange hoses and gizmos hooked to the ships before they launch, it was never made clear in these movies what they run on. George Lucas apparently never wanted us to get bored by the details, so you could fill in the blanks on your own for this one. Lando was running a gas-mining facility on Bespin in The Empire Strikes back, so maybe he was in the spaceship fuel business. We may never know, so be careful with whatever you put in the tank of your X-Wing.

• As always, extinguish all smoking materials while refueling and be sure to hold on to your receipts. Your own mileage may vary.

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• In Lexx, the living spaceship was also equipped with... living toilets. They even had large, waggling tongues, a la Little Shop of Horrors, and were more than eager to lap up the crew's waste materials. That would either make going to the bathroom incredibly fun, or moderately terrifying. Think you can hold it for 42,000,000 miles? You could if the toilet looked like it wanted to eat your ass.
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• Lexx wasn't the only living spaceship with bathroom facilities. Moya in Farscape also grew convenience spots for her crew, including showers and toilets. In fact, the water system was provided by Moya's own internal plumbing system, which her saliva powered the sewer system. That just seems like all kinds of "two girls, one cup" wrong.
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• In the future of Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone was perplexed by the futuristic toilets. The bowls looked the same, but as far as waste management went, there were three mysterious "seashells" next to the toilet that he never quite figured out. We never figured it out either, and we'll chalk it up to extremely lazy writers who didn't feel the need to explain how they wiped their asses in the future, so now we'll forever be wondering what those damn shells did.
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• Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was so detailed that the Zero Gravity Toilet installed on the passenger ship to the moon including verbose instructions on how to use the waste facilities. Although if you really had to go, we can't imagine anyone taking the time to actually read through all of these steps before stepping inside. Wouldn't you print something like this where you could easily read it while doing your duty? The only way this could be worse would be if they just handed you a 200 page manual as you went in.
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• Onboard the Serenity in Firefly, living space is at a premium, so they've got toilets that fold neatly into the wall and flush as they go. Then you pull out the sink like a drawer and wash your hands, although preferably using soap. In the clip below, Captain Mal Reynolds takes a whiz and then simply WETS HIS HANDS DOWN THE WATER then puts them on his face. Meaning he's just coated his cheeks in penis germs. No wonder he hasn't scored with Inara just yet.
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With apologies to Kathleen Meyer's How To Shit In The Woods.

It's like a holiday ship, all red and shiny! Maybe it's delivering presents to gas beings on Jupiter. Images by Adam Benton.

The Art of Adam Benton [Sentient Developments]

All the artist's work is for sale, and you can also get instructional materials that help you make your own art out of recycled computer parts.

Alex Andromeda [artist's site]