Starship Dimensions

One of the perennial favorites for flame wars in newsgroups is when fans of science fiction gather and the hoary topic crops up which we here at the 'Nest like to think of as ... starship top trumps.

For instance, how many Battlestars would it take to defeat the Death Star - or in a temporal grudge match between Doctor Who's TARDIS and the time travelling car from Back to the Future, which craft would flipping triumph?

Well, here come a site which, if perhaps not giving you the full specification of imperial weaponry, at least makes a start on the scale side of things.

Grenade launcher not included.

Starship Dimensions is intended to allow SF fans to get an impression of the true scale of their favorite spacecraft by being able to compare ships across genres, as well as being able to compare them with contemporary objects with which they are familiar.

The scales are based on meter-to-pixel ratios so that they are accurate on any platform. The background grid is divided into groups of ten, and larger groups of one hundred pixels, to allow for easy measurement.

Starship Dimensions is only intended to compare the actual physical dimensions of the starships, and makes no claims as to any other aspect of these ships - firepower, speed, etc.

The charts are intended to be interactive so that Internet Explorer users may click and drag the starships within the charts to arrange them in whichever way they please.

When we surfed on by, the site had ships from 2001 a Space Odyssey, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1, some existing and proposed space projects, Freespace, Independence Day, the Last Starfighter, Lexx, Macross/Robotech, Rendezvous with Rama, Silent Running, Space 1999, Space Above and Beyond, Star Trek, Star Wars Ships, Starship Troopers Ships and Titan AE.

The collection of comparative drawings is being added to all the time, and the webmaster is always open to new suggestions (and help in compiling the information needed to incorporate a new ship).

The very fine Starship Dimensions is available over at: http://www.merzo.net/

Stephen Hunt