Space Is an Ocean: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

For example...

* Spacecraft are called "ships". In many series, a small craft can even be called a "boat", and space-based missiles are called "torpedoes".

** Furthermore, the classes of ships in the [[Standard Sci-Fi Fleet]] are usually [[Types of Naval Ships|analogous to classes of waterborne ships, especially those used during World War II: Cruiser, Battleship, Destroyer, Frigate, etc]]. Good luck finding a Space Schooner or Space Junk.<ref>No, not [[Landfill Beyond the Stars|that kind]].</ref><ref>Or [[I Call Him "Mister Happy"|that kind]].</ref>

** Some works of fiction [[Space Sailing|blur the line between spaceships and oceangoing vessels even further]].

** Navigation lights, which tell a viewer nothing about the orientation of a ship in zero-g.

* Space is [[2-D Space|two-dimensional]].

** Which plays into the fact that viewscreens are almost always two-dimensional, when displays for battles at least should be three.

* Space [[Space Friction|has friction]].

** It is worth noting NASA itself is not a military organization, and while many astronauts have a military background they can be from any service. Of the first two men on the moon Neil Armstrong flew for the Navy in Korea and retired well before joining NASA, while Buzz Aldrin was Air Force and still commissioned during Apollo 11. Confusion often arises as the military operates its own space ventures within more than one branch, the US Navy for example relies on satellite communications.

** Countries in the Sinosphere (China, Japan, either Korea, Vietnam) don't usually have branch-specific ranks—a Japanese or Chinese "Colonel" is literally a "Land Senior Field Officer" (or "Air Senior Field Officer", for the equivalent of an Air Force colonel), while his naval counterpart is a "Sea Senior Field Officer".

* Spaceships have a [[The Bridge|bridge]] with a big window in the front that looks out on space and is usually at the front or top of the ship. The decks of the spaceship will be parallel to the direction of flight.

* Spaceships have a very noticeable "top" and "bottom". Cockpits, conning-towers, communication dishes, weapons etc. will mostly be on the "top". The underside will be smoother, often punctuated only by a "bomb-bay" style docking hatch. This could justified for vehicles designed for atmospheric flight and landing, but makes ''no'' sense for orbit-to-deep-space-only ships.

* [[Space Clouds]] can hide your ship like an ocean fog.

 

Slightly more savvy writers may also incorporate elements of atmospheric flight, especially when dealing with single-man craft: Fighters are almost always aerodynamic, and ships will bank when turning if the budget allows. [[World War II]] is a common inspiration, with the destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers analogous to their nautical namesakes and the fighters to aircraft, using the tactics of [[Old School Dogfighting]] and having to close to [[See the Whites of Their Eyes|broadside range with capital-ship guns]]. Elements of road vehicles are generally [[Played for Laughs]]; if a spacecraft has a [[Driving Stick|manual transmission]], it's a sure sign that [[Rule of Funny]] is a prime consideration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compare [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]], [[The Sky Is an Ocean]], [[Sand Is Water]] and [[Water Is Air]].

 

* While ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'' mostly avoids this territory (or [[Minovsky Physics|goes to great lengths]] to justify it), White Base still has a big, old-fashioned and suspiciously nautical steering wheel on the bridge. The same goes for both the Musai-class cruisers and Gaw-class carriers.

** Deserving special mention is ''[[Crossbone Gundam]]'', which has no less than two different ships designed to look like galleons, the ''[http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/crossbone/mothervanguard.htm Mother Vanguard]'' and its sister ship, ''[http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/crossbone/eosnyx.htm Eos Nyx]''. There's a seeming justification in a later manga, where one character says "Well, if we're going to be [[Space Pirates]], we might as well run with the theme!", but the fact is that ''Mother Vanguard'' was designed by an entirely separate faction, one that tended to be aristocratic and knightly rather than piratical.

** Avoided completely with ''[[Gundam Wing]]'', for all of the talk about indestructable Gundams, there was little to no space warships (except for fragile Mobile Suit Carriers which did not pack much in the way of aramaents) and Mobile Suits attacked from Space Stations and Asteroids.

* The anime OAV ''Sol Bianca'' takes this one step further, in that the titular ship enters and exits hyperspace like a submarine diving or surfacing, ''complete with waves''.

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'', where the [[Cool Starship]] suddenly sinks into a ''literal'' space ocean.

- It seems that the waves of ultra-dense space are pushing us down!|Yeah. Like I said. WHY THE HELL ARE WE SINKING IN SPACE?!}}

** In this case, it was supposedly space so condensed that it acted like water. This included things like pressure. In fact, when that pressure resulted in the super-condensed space punching holes in the hull and "flooding" the ship, they decided that it was more accurate to call it "spacing" than flooding.

*** This might actually be a case of ''[[Truth in Television]]'', supermassive black holes (such as the one believed to be at the center of the Milky Way) are theorized to have a density close to water.

** Harlock's friend Emeraldas' ship ''Queen Emeraldas'' is a literal ship, suspended from a zeppelin.

** In ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]]'', Earth deliberately refits old (as in WWII-vintage) battleships as starships, and even continues to paint anti-fouling paint on them below the "waterline." The paint, however, makes sense, as the ship is intended to still function on water.

*** Almost all the space combat is two-dimensional as well until a battle in Season Three where the Yamato attacks from below the plane of battle, spinning on its fore-to-aft axis to shoot enemies on all sides.

* In ''[[Starship Operators]]'', the ships are on the same scale as battleships and (usually) fight like battleships. Two "stealth ships" are called "space submarines". Whenever any ship is destroyed, it's reported as having been "sunk".

* The opening in ''[[Outlaw Star]]'' gives a narration in most episodes heavily relating space to being an ocean. Also in one episode their ship rides a stream of aether through space.

== Comic Books ==

* Taken very literally in an early issue of ''[[Fantastic Four]]''. There's only time to send one of the Inhumans to rescue Reed, who's stuck in the Negative Zone; Black Bolt chooses Triton, the merman, because space is like an ocean.

* The French graphic novel series, HK has the submarine route, as spacecraft here look like giant robotic whales and sharks. Whilst we don't see them battle each other, their decks are arranged in parallel like a submarine, and they land in bodies of water at harbors.

 

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' (Though to be fair, many of the films' space battles would be incomprehensible if they took full advantage of 3D space.)

** Where the concept is taken to its ''reductio ad absurdum'' endpoint in ''Attack of the Clones'' where Obi-Wan Kenobi is forced to dodge seismic charges (read: depth charges) that make a loud "sonic" boom in a ''vacuum''.

** In ''Return of the Jedi'' when Rebel vessels and Imperial Star Destroyers trade blasterfire during the final climactic space battle, with fighters streaming past in the foreground.

** Star Destroyers seem to array most of their guns in a top-turret and broadside position, making them commically vulnerable to anyone coming in from behind or below them.

** Also, the "solar sails" in the movie act more like ridiculously efficient solar panels than actual solar sails; the ship's propulsion is actually provided by engines mounted at the stern. The sails don't propel the ship directly, they just provide power to the engines, and probably the artificial gravity and the other stuff that requires electrical power.

** In ''[[Pixar Shorts|BURN-E]]'' it is revealed that the ship had actually tilted several degrees to one side. Not that it makes much sense, but it was pretty cool.

** Additionally, the missiles had to be fired manually by the loading crews on command from [[The Bridge]] instead of a single button on said bridge. Interestingly, the final space battle between the ''[[Cool Ship|Tiger's Claw]]'' and a [[Catfolk|Kilrathi]] battleship ends up looking more like a surface naval battle with {{spoiler|the ''Tiger's Claw'' forcing the Kilrathi ship to come by her side and then opening up with a broadside}}.

*** Oh, and their on-board computers appear to have tons of data, including the identities of top-secret high-ranking operatives. The Kilrathi should've been trying to capture one of ''those'' computers instead of a Navcom AI.

* ''[[This Island Earth]]''. Even the ''title'' is an example.

** Although, to be fair, the ''Palomino'' was portrayed as a vertically-arrayed vehicle, and given the FX of the time the first half an hour of the movie makes a game attempt to portray a crew operating in free fall in a spacecraft that actually looks somewhat plausible, given FTL. It's an odd contrast to the rest of the movie.

* Though the film ''[[The Fifth Element]]'' has very few (and even less relevant) space aspects, it takes this trope to its logical conclusion: the luxury space cruise liner ''Fhloston Paradise'' is [[Space Sailing|shaped like a steam paddle boat]], and has a classical ''nautical steering wheel'' to make ''course corrections''. The [[Justified Trope|justification]] would be that it is a ship meant for recreation, and so letting the [[Rule of Cool]] determine its design (for the enjoyment of rich tourists) makes a bit more sense than it would for a vessel with a more mundane purpose.

 

 

* In Herman Melville's ''[[Moby Dick]]'', Ahab says the line "...where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with the bones of millions of the drowned..." comparing the planet itself to a ship sailing through the cosmos.

* While the design of his spacecraft reflect a working knowledge of engineering, almost every book [[Robert A. Heinlein]] wrote that took place aboard a spaceship assumed nautical, particularly Naval, discipline and traditions, from Laz & Lor's stick-on Captain's insignia to Captain Hilda of the Gay Deceiver. This might have had as much to do with Heinlein's own Naval career as anything, although it has undoubtedly shaped the trope to some degree.

* The novel ''Berserker Fury'' '''is''' the [[World War II]] naval Battle of Midway [[In Space]]!. The AI robot ships are the Japanese and humanity is the Americans. Complete down to the planet named 50/50 (Midway), the "space carriers" ''Venture'' (USS Enterprise), ''Stinger'' (USS Hornet), and so on. They even broke the Berserker code, like the USA broke the Japanese Purple Code.

** The latest book, ''The Cole Protocol'' lampshades the foolishness of this placement, as well as the difference in philosophy when a raiding Covenant Elite speculates that humans have far more reckless courage than most other races of the galaxy.

** The overall plot was nice for most who knew their naval history, saying oh X is Y and so forth. Then [[Off the Rails|Napoleon got nuked]] ...

* [[David Drake]]'s RCN series is loosely based off the 18th century British navy, complete with spaceships that travel through hyperspace using sails. However, the sails are handled fairly realistically: stripping a ship's sails with a plasma cannon is a quick and easy way to keep it from escaping into hyperspace, the sails need to be furled and stowed before entering an atomsphere, and when deployed, interfere with the ships's realspace maneuvering and combat.

** In the same way that Honor Harrington is Hornblower/Nelson IN SPACE, the RCN books are Patrick O'Brian IN SPACE, with Daniel O'Leary in the role of Jack Aubrey and Adele Mundy as Stephen Maturin (only with her being the ship's comms officer rather than its surgeon).

** Later on in ''Shadow Puppets'' Ender's father, after hearing a reference to a "dry dock", asks if there is also a "wet dock". Dimak's response is: "Nautical terminology dies hard."

* Peter F. Hamilton's spaceships (especially in the ''Night's Dawn'' trilogy) are spherical, and for a reason: Adamist (that is, non-biotechnological) starships use a "ZTT drive" to jump across lightyears. The drive creates a wormhole that, like a black hole, has a spherical event horizon. Activating the drive while the ship is in non-spherical mode (that is, with sensors extended) will lead to everything beyond the event horizon being torn apart and compressed to fusion density. BOOM!

* In "Night Train to Rigel" by Timothy Zahn, space is actually a railway system. Go figure.

* A note: despite 'Navigators', and a feudal setting, ''[[Dune]]'' space travel is not in the least an example of this trope - the Holtzmann effect, while never properly described, seems to work more like teleportation than anything else (huge distances are moved 'in the blink of an eye', actual 'sailing' is negligible on any scale, and space warfare non-existent apart form orbital skirmishes due to the Guild (who are neutral) monopoly on interstellar travel.

* [[Harry Harrison]] makes an effort to avert this (to an extent) in his ''Starworld'' novel, although the novel only has one space battle. An engineer shows the protagonist (also an engineer) a clip of a space battle from an old sci-fi movie and asks him to point out everything in it that's wrong. The protagonist can't do it, as he knows absolutely nothing about space combat and space travel in general. Among others, the engineer points out that the ship in the movie maneuvered like an airplane (banking hard), was able to stop on a dime to hide behind a planetoid, was using energy weapons (while lasers and plasma weapons exist in this 'verse, they're only useful at relatively short ranges), and had windows. Actual space combat is explained as between ships many kilometers away from each other, and the only weapons being used are missiles (both conventional and nuclear), although they are often deployed as screens (an impromptu mine field) ahead of the fleet. The reason the engineer needs the protagonist's help is to help him iron out the last few kinks on the [[La Résistance|rebels]]' secret weapon - a [[Magnetic Weapons|mass driver]] using plain old metal balls as ammo. They also have short-range autocannons firing rocket-propelled bullets. The entire [[Curb Stomp Battle]] is ridiculously short. The Earth fleet gets crippled by the mass drivers' opening volley with the autocannons delivering the coup de grâce.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

** They did this specifically to avoid the cliche of a circular bridge with the captain in the center, popularized by ''Star Trek''.

** The Earth Alliance also has an interesting classification for ships, contrary to the modern one. All new post-Minbari War capital ships are classified as "destroyers", despite being the same, or even bigger, than the previous classes of ships. The two main classes of ships used during the war were the ''Hyperion''-class heavy cruiser, much smaller and more maneuverable than the post-war ''Omega''-class destroyer, and the ''Nova''-class dreadnought, the ''Omega'''s predecessor. The later designs, the ''Warlock'' and the ''Victory'' class are both called destroyers. Not that using this terminology even makes sense in space.

** Actually, they did have to rely on visual targeting during the [[Hopeless War|Earth-Minbari War]], as the Minbari ''Sharlin''-class war cruisers were equipped with an advanced jamming system that prevented weapon locks.

** Lampshaded in ''Face of the Enemy''. When stranded in a Raptor with a non-operational FTL, one of the crewmen in Felix's group begins praying to Poseidon. One of the Eights on board is puzzled since they're a long way from water. He replies that they're in a ship so it's close enough.

** Long-range spaceships are usually designed to accelerate for half of the distance (until the turnaround point) and then decelerate, so the engines are always in use. Now, Starship UK may not have had a set destination (and thus no turnaround point) but that's even less realistic: Picking a random vector and drifting is the worst possible way of approaching a star, let alone a habitable world.

** Even if not needed for propulsion there would still be the need for power, lights, artificial gravity, etc.

** From interviews and DVD commentaries, the feel of ''Serenity'' specifically was supposed to be submarine-oriented rather than ship-oriented, which does then make the nickname of 'boat' remind one more of "u-boat" (a German word for "submarine" even if in English it's used almost exclusively for German World War submarines) than surface ships and boats. This was deliberately designed to contrast with the Alliance 'floating cities' as a way of showing the concept of efficiency (submarine-like ships that don't waste any part of the structure) and decadent waste (alliance ships being designed to be impressive, but not efficient). Best highlighted in the episode "Bushwacked" when Kaylee displays a willingness to take on the Alliance single-handedly for daring to call ''Serenity'' a junker - Alliance ships are the junk vessels to her because of their (dangerous) lack of engineering logic.

* ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' tended to vary in its depiction of space depending on [[Rule of Funny|which was funnier at the moment]]. In [[The Movie]], the Satellite Of Love's controls were shown to be identical to a boat's helm, and Gypsy, piloting the satellite, was wearing a sailor's cap and singing a sea shanty.

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' avert this trope in some ways, but follow it in others:

** Since the Stargate program is run by the U.S. Air Force, it uses more Air Force than nautical analogies. (And with official Air Force technical advisors, they generally [[Shown Their Work|get the details right]]. One of the spacecraft in [[Stargate Atlantis]] was dubbed the "Puddle Jumper", an aircraft name (though it was called a Gate Ship by the original creators). Prototype USAF starships and fighters are dubbed "X-301" and similar, following Air Force practice for experimental aircraft.

* In the British sci-fi series ''[[UFO]]'' it appears that Space Is The English Channel given the number of [[World War II|Battle of Britain tropes]] it draws upon: Moonbase is the beleaguered sector airfield, SID (Space Intruder Detector) the RDF radar post, and calmly-speaking young women (WAAF's) vector in SHADO Interceptors (Spitfires) against the anonymous alien invaders (German bombers). But given that the Moon takes 27.322 days to orbit the Earth, [[Fridge Logic|one wonders why]] the aliens don't just attack SHADO headquarters when the Moon is on the opposite side of the planet.

* [[Carl Sagan]] famously said that "the surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean," and devoted an entire episode of ''[[Cosmos]]'' to comparisons between sea travelers of old and space travelers of the modern day and future. But at no point does he attempt to claim any of the above ocean/space tropes are actually logical or viable, instead merely using the analogy to help others understand. He also had a habit of referring to all manner of spacecraft as "ships" - everything from small robotic probes to theoretical interstellar designs, though, again, this was just poetic license.

** The show pretty much ignores fluid dynamics whenever it's convenient and goes with the [[Water Is Air]] idea.

 

** That same episode egregiously featured [[Space Is Noisy|Sonar in Space]] to the extent that the crew of the Enterprise had to be quiet while the Romulans were hunting them.

*** More seriously, the nebula setting works into why things happen as they do: sensors don't work, so the only way for the ships to find each other is pretty much by looking out the windows, which changes which strategies are reasonable. The whole "Two dimensional thinking" thing probably only ''works'' because of the nebula: had Reliant's sensors been working, it wouldn't matter that Khan didn't think to look up or down: he could just ''ask the computer'' where the Enterprise was.

*** Apparently so, Gene Roddenberry had submarines in mind when he started making the original series, which is why he wanted the episode "Balance of Terror" to be made - it was all about the submarine imagery.

** In the TNG episode "The Outrageous Okona" a small-time Han Solo clone cargo pilot tells Data "Life is like loading twice your cargo weight on your spacecraft. If it's parakeets and you keep half of them flying all the time it's alright." Funny. With a boat. But why would a space craft have a weight limit? It could possibly have an upper limit on mass, but parakeets have the same mass flying or landed.

*** Extra points to this one in that the spaceship has actual ''rigging'' - rigging that has to be altered manually like a sailing ship. Apparently the Bajorans invented interstellar flight some time before things like hydraulics, computers or mechanisation...

** Another maritime tradition that survives in Starfleet is the tradition of ship's captains performing wedding ceremonies. Both Kirk and Picard had this honor on the show, even saying the same words(presumably an official text for Starfleet captains): "Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship masters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony."

** In one of the novels (''Dark Mirror'' by Diane Duane) the Enterprise-D ''does'' carry dolphins. Apparently, not only are they intelligent and capable of communicating with humans, they can sense dimensional distortions. Handy.

** Later compounded by the spiraling camera angle at which the Enterprise approaches the Narada over {{spoiler|Vulcan}}.

** It also employs the fact space is three dimensional when the Enterprise warps into the debris field from the destroyed fleet, and has to barrel roll as well as dive underneath large pieces to avoid them.

* In the Trek movie ''First Contact'', this is averted in a rather neatly done scene in which Picard, Worf, and a supporting character must execute an EVA to dislodge some Borg who were trying to convert the navigational deflector into an FTL transmitter to call home for reinforcements. This device is located on the 'front' engineering section of of the Enterprise-E, usually facing 'forward'. However, for the trio outside the ship it's the 'top', and they approach it by walking along the 'bottom' of the saucer section, using magnetic boots, and the scene shows them walking upright and the Enterprise-E as being 'upside down' (to them). Later the navigational deflector on the 'front' is 'down' to Picard and Worf (and the viewers). For ''Star Trek'' is was an impressive bit of accuracy.

* In ''Generations'', Worf's promotion ceremony is held in a holodeck recreation of a 19th century British Naval vessel, complete with period uniforms and a plank.

* TOS also used whistles before some broadcasts on the ships internal comms exactly the same as Navy ships do today. Originally, in pre-modern times, the whistle was used to call all hands to the deck to hear the days General Orders. Today, it's more to catch everyone's attention before the broadcast. Mostly it's just tradition. Tradition is EVERYTHING in the Navy. It even overrides common sense in most cases.

* The fact that Dr. McCoy's nickname is Bones is also a reference to the sailing era-many a ship's surgeon was referred to as this.

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The implied setting for Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons includes the Astral Sea. Despite the Astral Sea being three-dimensional and possibly infinite, a "surface" exists that most creatures stay near out of instinct.

** ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' runs with this- there's more detail on life in a spaceship, and it's surprisingly similar to living on an [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men|Age of Sail vessel]] (only [[Darker and Edgier|GRIMDARK]], of course). It's also got that lovely submariny touch of Silent Running for stealth pruposes- in fact, this is stated to be the main way to disengage from a battle. Ships have a Fore, Aft, Left and Right side- no love for top and bottom...

* ''[[Battle Space]]'', the space-combat game based in the ''Battletech'' universe, avoids most of these aspects. While played on a 2D board, ships act in 3D space, there is no friction so all movement must be countered by spinning the ship around and applying thrust, some larger ships (jumpships/warships) have ambiguous hulls to hide the bridge (though, it should be pointed out that every captain would have intel on all non-top secret ships, so this would be moot), and fighters, dropships, and a few landing craft are the only things that can enter the atmosphere without being destroyed. There are still many that are unavoidable (space travel times, ship class names), but most of that is handwaved as otherwise it would be horrendously boring.

** Best of all, the turns do not alternate; the players write down their movement orders for the turn, fire ordnance based on anticipating the enemy's movement, move their ships, resolve ordnance fire and then take turns firing the main ship-to-ship weaponry - all in the same turn! Makes the game a lot more realistic, and more about actual tactics than quirks in the rules.

* ''[[Starfire]]'' has fleets of starships, with size classes named things like "light cruiser", "battlecruiser", "superdreadnought", etc., who cruise under constant engine power and always follow their noses. The Terran Federation Navy is run by admirals, who give orders to starship captains. Messages sent between star systems have to be delivered by courier drone, or in person, since radio signals can't travel through a warp point. And, of course, the game is plated on a flat map, which in the first edition was even blue in color.

 

== Video Games ==

** [[Free Space]]'s terminology is an interesting example. It turns out that "destroyers" are battleship/aircraft-carrier hybrids and the largets warships in the game, while "cruisers" are the smallest, cheapest warships. The second game, set 32 years after the first, introduces "corvettes" which are slightly smaller than destroyers. Fighter units are formed into "squads," with "wings" being tactical elements of up to four fighters. Since this occurs centuries in the future however, it's likely all these changes were intentional, especially since Volition hired an ex-Marine NCO as a military consultant.

* ''[[Freelancer]]'' fits this trope to a tee. There ''is'' friction in space: you lose speed if you kill your engines, and your ship returns to normal speed once you stop hitting the afterburners. Spacecraft are called ships, and although civilian spacecraft are called ''fighters, transports'', or even ''space trains'', capital ships are known as cruisers, frigates and ''gunboats''. You wander around a [[2-D Space]], capital ships have a bridge with a big window more often than not, the [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]] and somehow managed to create entire planets only a few times bigger than a tiny little outpost, and on top of that, planets and stations are like fixed islands, completely devoid of rotation and translation. However, the game is well done enough to actually make this weird form of outer space rather believable.

* The PC game ''Gratuitous Space Battles'' uses 2D space, friction in space and space fighters, Damaged ships even catch fire. Some mods have gone full circle, using the game to portray [[WW 2]] naval battles.

** There is more detail about [[Halo]] in the literature section of this page.

* Averted or played straight in the PC game ''Terminus'', depending on the player's choice of "realism". The game features an actual sliding scale by which to set how realistically the ships move in space. If set to "Newtonian", there is no friction and thus constant motion does not require constant acceleration. Stopping requires using reverse thrust, and a ship's mass affects how well this works (trying to stop a cargo hauler full of ore will take minute at least). You can even overaccelerate and tear your ship apart, though they do give a max safe velocity. [[2-D Space]] still applies, though.

* The Bioware RPG ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has this in spades, with nearly all of the terminology used by the Normandy crew (skipper, aye aye, aweigh, ashore...), the fact that the force it serves is the Alliance Navy, and the fact that a few other species' ships are given naval names as well (ex: the Quarian Flotilla). There are no particularly questionable uses of this trope, however.

** The final mission of [[Mass Effect 2]] shows the Normandy maneuvering through a debris field in a manner more suited to a stunt airplane than a ship. It seems that [[Mass Effect]] uses this trope for organizational and naming matters, but actual operations are a little better researched.

** Jeff 'Joker' Moreau: It takes skill to make a ship bank in a vacuum. Don't think it doesn't.

* The DS title ''[[Infinite Space]]'' refers to space as the "Sea of Stars" and ships generally follow the principles outlined in the intro. However, they do adopt wall formations instead of lines.

* [[Sword of the Stars]] uses the navy based naming conventions for ships, among some other standard features of this trope. In addition, the Whale people Liir take these descriptions further, describing their soldiers and explorers as "black swimmers", among other analogies.

 

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Pockett]]'' is built on this trope, complete with a sea-captain type space captain, tradional pirate syntax, and common navy crew protocol.

* Used to great effect in ''Second Empire'', in which a second-hand [[Doctor Who|Dalek]] warship designed for slow bombing runs utterly [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomps]] [[Moment of Awesome|a fleet of attacking fighters and a much more heavily armed enemy cruiser]] merely by having the captain realize the ''immense'' possibilities the aversion of this trope affords.

 

== Web Originals ==

* In [[Nexus Gate]] space is treated very much like an ocean. Why there are even space pirates who patrol the stars!

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* [[Futurama]] had an episode about a space cruise on a space ship called the Titanic. The episode goes pretty much as one would expect, with Zapp Brannigan (the captain of the Titanic) making as many comparisons between space and the ocean as possible.

 

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

* There are [[wikipedia:Solar sail|some fairly recent advances in space travel]] that look straight out of this trope.

** Same principle, but it'd probably look more like a parachute.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tropes in Space]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]