What Sci-fi spacecraft are most plausible?

I'm sure most of us here at Space Fellowship are avid science fiction fans. SO I wanted to everyone what sci-fi spacecraft do you think is most plausible and realistic in being build in some form or another. On some recent shows great effort was taken to portray how spacecraft would actually maneuver in space (Babylon-5 being one such example). According to wikipedia:



Interesting...

Puddle Jumper from Stargate Atlantis maybe?

I'm still dreaming of the day there's a major break through in propulsion tech... :)

Maybe in the end we'll be able to create Lighthuggers, as created by the Conjoiners (Consciousness Joiners) in the books by Alastair Reynolds, which I have to highly recommend. Also check the Conjoiner Engines a few paragraphs above the Lighthugger :-)

what about the rocket in first contact, a private industry group do it together away from Goverments

sounds familiar no?

I thought he was talking about what the future would bring and not present day scenarios? ;)

I love Babylon 5 !!!

(something that has to be said )

With B5 you don't have to imagine anything. With the rest, imagination is required
Unless, archeologists would find a mysterius ring in the egyptian desert.

An amazing show. I can't decide which show is better, Babylon 5 or the new Battlestar Galactica.

Without a doubt BSG, then B5, SGx, Farscape and Andromeda

Never really understood the Star Trek fascination.

Star Trek is the "granddaddy" of them all. Star Trek is the reason we have all these modern sci-fi shows exist.

I can understand the first few seasons, but The Next Generation? Enterprise? etc... It's just boring with the same plots all over again with different ears and colour on the clothes

You must have seen some other Next Generation show. The Next Generation further developed the Star Trek universe greatly with great stories about the klingon and the Borg. I do agree that last show, Enterpise, did kind of suck.

Anyway back to spacecraft, I was always impressed by Babylon 5 Starfury spacectaft and how it pivots around the CG to maneuver quickly.

The follwing link has a detailed description and some neat color drawings.

http://efni.org/Aurora.htm

FireFly from Serenity is cool as well as fairly realistic, it's basically a rip off of Osprey - an experimental chopper-plane project. Also there are a number of thrust vector shuttles in various sci-fi movies and books. Spaceships from Space Odissey are Ultra realistic, the only complaint being that they don't have radiator wings that they should. Star Wars Y-wing shuttle will fly with some modifications. Flying Saucers of all types are Ultra realistic by definition since that's what the aliens fly . But seriously a disk shape offers numerous advantages as a spaceship and especially as a shuttle design - like good lifting, respectable stability (with rotating stabilizers), artificial gravity (spin), nice surface to area ratio for both cooling and heating etc etc...

How much energy are you talking?

With sufficient energy, any of those craft are possible.

If we could collect enough energy (it would almost certainly have to be Z-Point) we could build warp drives.

Just good old fashioned plasma thrusters powered by nukes or equally energetic processess. Just on the side note, there is no reason to belive that hypothetical Z-generators would be powerful. Inexaustable energy yes, but powerful? I seriously doubt it. I seem to recall that New Scientist run a article about Dark Energy and it's implications for Z P energy. Apparrently our best and brightest ran a few after the fact calculations, fudged some numbers, waves their hands focus pokus like and declared that Z P energy is 10^100 times smaller than they thought previously. So ech, this kills that idea...