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Why ‘Star Wars’ Characters Are Taking Over the World’s Most Expensive Superyachts

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Maybe they should call it Starboard Wars.

What started out as “a bit of fun,” according to creative director Rob Armstrong, has become an annual tradition for the yacht designers at Thirtyc . Every year, the UK-based firm puts out a Star Wars -themed yacht, with characters or spacecraft from the franchise on board different superyachts. This week, in celebration of the unofficial Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be With You), Thirtyc released its latest series using yacht tenders driven by Star Wars characters.

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“We did our first one when we opened the studio in 2015,” Armstrong told Robb Report . “We felt like we were injecting a bit of fun into our industry. Most of us knew Star Wars while growing up, so it seemed like a good way to add some light humor to what can sometimes become very serious superyacht projects.”

Seeing a storm trooper and Darth Vader on a million-dollar tender isn’t an everyday occurrence. Neither is catching a glimpse of Princess Leia or Chewbacca driving away on another tender.

The Star Wars tribute, with Starfighters and other spacecraft aboard superyachts, has proven so popular that Thirtyc has expanded to smaller tenders.  Thirtyc Studio

At first, the firm received a lot of compliments about their whimsical but highly realistic work. “As it spoke to peoples’ imaginations, they started asking us to use their boats,” says Armstrong. Soon, Star Wars vehicles like AT-AT Walkers and Starfighters appeared on superyacht helipads and rear decks.

Recent superyachts transporting either Galactic Empire or Rebel vehicles included SilverFast, Eclipse , and many of the Damen support vessels, says Armstrong, who credits “great” marine photographers for providing the images. The team at ThirtyC also agonizes over the images to make them as realistic as possible, monitoring the way light falls from the yachts as well as figures standing on the smaller yacht tenders.

The UK designers have also included some Game of Thrones motifs on other superyachts.  Thirtyc

“We create image composites with the Star Wars theme, placing props and vehicles within the images,” says Armstrong. “Some of the characters were 3-D-modeled and placed to match the image. We want the shadows to look right on the boats.”

This year’s Star Wars  vehicle list includes the Pascoe SY9 Beachlander, Hodgdon 10.5m Venetian Limo Tender, Cockwells Titian Tender, Wally Tender 48 and Vandal 14m Open chase boat.

Armstrong says the annual exercise is a morale-builder for the team, and shows the yachting industry how creative the Thirtyc team can be. “The goal is to make people look twice so they don’t know if it’s real or not,” he says.

The Apollo lunar module on the helideck of the expedition yacht Luna.  Thirtyc

The Star Wars exercise has become so popular that Thirtyc has expanded its portfolio to Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and last year’s anniversary of the first lunar landing. The Apollo space capsule was set, appropriately, on the helipad of the 377-ft. expedition yacht, Luna.

Armstrong says the team is already discussing what next year’s Star Wars theme will be. “Each year’s a challenge to think up a new angle for our audience and friends,” he says. “We’ll be brainstorming, but all ideas are welcome.”

Check out more Star Wars -themed yacht recreations below:

Images courtesy of Thirtyc

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Horizon Star Yacht

Originally commissioned by Girongo the Hutt, infamous and charismatic outer-rim pirate, the Horizon Star Yacht is touted by many as the epitome of luxury. An engineering marvel, the Horizon featured in a popular self-titled holovid series in which Girongo the Hutt portrayed his exploits in a highly romanticized fashion. This high-profile exposure helped to inflate the Horizon Star Yacht's reputation as a high quality ship. Girongo the Hutt is believed to have profited greatly from his holovid's advertising of the Yacht.

One departure from standard Luxury Yacht designs was to include a starfighter-style cockpit in place of the more traditional bridge seen on other Yachts. With room for only a pilot, co-pilot, and a navigator, the Horizon is designed to be run by a small crew, giving a more hands-on feel when piloting the ship. The Horizon is more heavily armed than previous Yacht models, with twin heavy lasers flanking the cockpit. It is also fitted with a ventral tractor beam to aid in loading and unloading the ship's docking bay. Its inner, strut-mounted pods house the twin ion engines that propel the ship during sublight travel and its outer, wing-mounted pods house suites of advanced sensors, giving the ship a remarkable detection range. The interior of the ship is lavishly decorated with hardwood floors and stonework features. Typically, the Horizon's fixtures are adorned with precious metals.

With a unique combination of luxury and practicality, the Horizon is usually preferred by those looking to travel swiftly and in style. While not particularly suited to any one purpose, the Horizon's speed, weaponry and docking capabilities make it highly adaptable. For this reason, the Horizon is able to fulfill a variety of roles, making it the ideal home away from home for wealthy sentients across the galaxy.

Holonet links

• Horizon Star Yacht - Technical Specifications
• Light Freighters

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Baudo -class star yacht

• Edit source
• View history

• 2 Behind the scenes
• 3 Appearances
• 5 Notes and references

History [ ]

Baudo-class star yacht schematic

As a sporting yacht , the ship was mostly used as a pleasure vehicle by affluent beings. Baudos were not beloved by most bulk freighter pilots, who disliked being passed on the spacelanes. The ship itself was described as having a resemblance to some sea creatures. Baudo -class yachts were equipped with a powerful sublight drive for good speed in normal space. The single laser cannon in the standard version of the yacht was not only installed for looks—several precise hits could make pirates change their minds. Mirax Terrik's Pulsar Skate was a highly modified Baudo -class star yacht, and certainly the most famous ship of this type.

The Baudo -class yacht was produced by the shipyards owned by Mendel Baudo , and each ship was custom-built to the specifications of its owner. This meant that each ship was unique in some way from all others, although the underlying drive systems remained common. Because these ships were not exceptionally fast or complicated, the Baudo -class yacht found a following among amateur and experienced pilots. However, purchasing one of these ships required that a customer be referred to Mendel Baudo by another being who had purchased one, since Baudo refused to take orders without a reference. Build time could take as much as a standard year, depending on the amount of customization, because Mendel Baudo personally ensured that each ship was perfect.

Behind the scenes [ ]

Pulsar Skate as seen in the X-Wing comics.

Two contrasting versions of the Baudo -class star yacht appear to exist in canon . Probably the better-known version is the design used for the Pulsar Skate in the Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics and Star Wars Customizable Card Game , appearing first in Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron: The Phantom Affair in 1996. However, the earlier illustration in the Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters supplement for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (which was used as a silhouette in Pirates & Privateers ) show a flatter and smoother starship: this seems to have served as the basis for the descriptions of the vessel in the X-Wing novels , and recently in Legacy of the Force: Exile . No canonical explanation has been offered to resolve the discrepancy.

The Moldy Crow was originally going to be a Baudo -class star yacht.

Appearances [ ]

Sources [ ].

• Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters
• Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters , Second Edition

• Pirates & Privateers
• The Official Star Wars Fact File 76 (ROG5-6, X-wing Rogue Squadron )
• The Official Star Wars Fact File 108 (PUL1-2, Pulsar Skate )
• The Official Star Wars Fact File 126 (TER1-2, Booster Terrik )
• Starships of the Galaxy , Saga Edition
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• Desperate Allies

Notes and references [ ]

• ↑ Fly Casual
• ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Starships of the Galaxy , Saga Edition
• 1 The Acolyte
• 2 High Republic Era
• 3 The Bad Batch Season 3

More From Forbes

The first ‘the acolyte’ controversy is absurd, even for ‘star wars’ fans.

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The Acolyte

The Acolyte has received both its first trailer and release date , as the new Star Wars project will arrive rather soon on June 4, 2024. The trailer showed off what essentially seems to be a Sith serial killer, hunting down Jedi in an effort to fix an imbalance of power between force users. And there may be some amount of revenge in there too for all we know.

Naturally, controversy has erupted from the trailer, and perhaps not what you were thinking. While I’m sure there are “woke” accusations somewhere out there about its Asian and black leads, that’s not what is being discussed the most. Rather, that would be the idea that the show it “retconning” existing Star Wars lore by having the Sith in this time period.

This is based on a specific prequel quote from Ki-Adi-Mundi, member of the Jedi Council, in which he declared that it was “impossible” that the Sith were attacking as he says “the Sith have been extinct for a millennium.”

The idea here is that The Acolyte is breaking canon by inserting Sith into the High Republic era which instead started several hundred years ago and ended about 80 years before Order 66. The Acolyte specifically is 100 years before The Phantom Menace.

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This is, of course, totally absurd for a number of reasons.

• Just because the Sith were not around en masse like in the Old Republic days, does not mean they did not exist and were hiding in the shadows. Which is apparently exactly what is happening in The Acolyte.
• Then, this quote is being given by a guy who did not know there was an entire Sith conspiracy happening under the Council’s nose . This is quite literally the entire plot of the prequels. If the guy didn’t know Palpatine was a Sith lord, why should we trust his so-called knowledge of the status of the Sith for the last thousand years?
• More generally, a single guy’s opinion on something is not a fact. A stated opinion is not canon. This seems like extremely basic stuff.

The Acolyte is actually poised to bring some old stuff back into canon, as its showrunner has promised that there will be some EU/Legends content that will make it into the show, adopting it the way we’ve seen with many other things brought forward from that era. While some things will likely never arrive (sorry Mara Jade), we’ll see what The Acolyte has in store for us.

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Star Wars: The Acolyte Gets First Trailer Ahead of June 4 Disney+ Premiere

Check it out..

To dive deeper into the trailer, check out our chat with Leslye Headland all about it .

The Acolyte, a Star Wars show dubbed "Frozen meets Kill Bill" by showrunner Leslye Headland, has received its first trailer ahead of its highly anticipated Disney+ premiere.

The near-two minute trailer, below, opens with scenes reminiscent of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy as we see the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, though even before the days of Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace. Taking place during The High Republic — an era set 100 to 200 years before the prequels so far only explored in novels and comics — the trailer shows Jedi training in their sparkling white robes representative of this era.

It then cuts to scenes more akin to the Original Trilogy, however, as we see what's now a Star Wars mainstay: the cantina. Headland's fresh take on Star Wars comes soon after though, as we see the striking action inspired by director Akira Kurosawa and martial arts films.

Other scenes show several Jedi on screen at once , weilding the yellow lightsabers also iconic to this era, and the premise of The Acolyte is revealed: someone is hunting Jedi. The show isn't taking a traditional route here though, as Headland has made clear it's told from the perspective of "the bad guys" , meaning the Sith.

This dynamic is exemplified towards the end of the trailer, where Jodie Turner-Smith's character says the line: "It's not about good or bad, this is about power and who's allowed to use it."

The Acolyte was announced in 2020 but further details didn't emerge for a while. Amandla Stenberg was announced as the lead in 2022 , and Squid Game star Lee Jung-Jae was confirmed as a main character soon after.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

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'The Acolyte' trailer shows 1st look at new 'Star Wars' series: Watch here

The series premieres on Disney+ with two episodes on June 4.

Lucasfilm has revealed the trailer to its highly anticipated " Star Wars " series "The Acolyte," from "Russian Doll" co-creator Leslye Headland, which will debut on Disney+ with two episodes on June 4.

The trailer begins with "Squid Game" actor Lee Jung-jae as Jedi Master Sol leading a group of younglings in meditation, telling them, "Your eyes can deceive you. We must not trust them."

MORE: 5 things we learned about 'Star Wars' shows at Star Wars Celebration 2023

He instructs them to close their eyes and tell him what comes into their mind. "Light," one young student offers, while another says "balance." A third, likely the younger version of Amandla Stenberg's character Mae, darkly says, "I see fire."

Stenberg's masked assassin is shown facing off with a Jedi played by "The Matrix" franchise veteran Carrie-Anne Moss. She repeatedly dodges then uses the Force to shove her away.

"Someone is killing Jedi," a character explains. "It doesn't make sense."

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There's a shot of a hunting party of eight Jedi and a quick reveal of a pensive Wookiee with his normally furry head shaved in the style of a samurai, complete with a top knot.

"This isn't about good or bad," Jodie Turner-Smith's Aniseya advises. "This is about power and who is allowed to use it."

The hunting party, including "Logan" actress Dafne Keen, ultimately find themselves facing a threat in a dark forest. Just then, a red Sith lightsaber spins through the air, slashing the trees around them before its unseen owner calls it back to their hand.

MORE: New 'Star Wars' movie 'The Mandalorian & Grogu' announced

At this, all the Jedi ignite their sabers and charge the threat, only to be blown back by a tremendous Force blast, and the trailer ends.

Joining Jung-jae, Stenberg, Moss, Turner-Smith and Keen in the cast are Manny Jacinto, Charlie Barnett, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman and Joonas Suotamo.

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‘Star Wars’ Series ‘The Acolyte’ Sets Disney+ Premiere Date

By Joe Otterson

Joe Otterson

TV Reporter

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The “Star Wars” series “ The Acolyte ” has set its Disney+ premiere date.

The series will debut on the streaming service on June 4 . A poster for the series has also been revealed, which can be seen below.

The series stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, and Carrie-Anne Moss.

Leslye Headland created the series and serves as showrunner and executive producer. Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King, and Jason Micallef also executive produce, with Charmaine DeGraté and Kor Adana serving as co-executive producers. Rayne Roberts and Damian Anderson are producers on the series.

Variety exclusively reported “The Acolyte” was in the works back in 2020. It was officially announced by Lucasfilm at the annual “Star Wars” Day celebration later that same year.

“The Acolyte” is the latest Disney+ “Star Wars” show, with fellow new series “Skeleton Crew” still awaiting a premiere date. The streamer has previously released shows like “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Andor,” “Ahsoka,” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” Season 2 of “Andor” recently wrapped filming. Disney+ is also home to the hit series “The Mandalorian.” That show has aired three seasons to date, with a movie set to begin production later this year.

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Bell media’s sean cohan is “pot committed” on content spend, plans fast channels, wider distribution for crave and a push on program sales, ‘the acolyte’ trailer: amandla stenberg faces off against a jedi in disney+ ‘star wars’ series – update.

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UPDATED: Disney+ has released the first trailer for The Acolyte ahead of its June 4 premiere date on the streaming service.

The trailer opens with Lee Jung-jae’s Jedi master teaching a group of younglings as danger lurks. Amandla Stenberg stars as an unnamed warrior who is bent on taking out Jedi with her first attempt aimed at Carrie-Anne Moss. A galaxy-wide search is then launched to take out the assassin.

PREVIOUS, March 18: Disney+ has revealed a spring premiere date for The Acolyte , the new Lucasfilm Star Wars series. Star Wars: The Acolyte will be released June 4 on the streaming service. The date was revealed Monday on Star Wars verified X account, which also teases more news to come tomorrow. (See below).

Created by Lesley Headland (Russian Doll), The Acolyte  is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated. 

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Cast includes Amandla Stenberg ( The Hate U Give ), Lee Jung-jae ( Squid Game ), Manny Jacinto, Jodie Turner-Smith ( Queen & Slim ), Dafne Keen ( His Dark Materials ), Rebecca Henderson ( Inventing Anna ), Charlie Barnett ( Russian Doll ), Dean-Charles Chapman ( 1917 ) and  Carrie-Anne Moss  ( The Matrix ).

Headland also serves as showrunner and executive produces with Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King and Jason Micallef. Rayne Roberts and Damian Anderson are producing. Headland will also direct the series pilot.

Tomorrow. #TheAcolyte pic.twitter.com/ILIfVu11ve — Star Wars (@starwars) March 18, 2024

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AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE

Soviet star wars.

The launch that saved the world from orbiting laser battle stations.

Dwayne A. Day and Robert G. Kennedy III

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for his "Star Wars" concept, the Soviet Union launched a test satellite for its own space-based laser system, which failed to reach orbit. Had it succeeded, the cold war might have taken a different turn.

The spacecraft was known as Polyus-Skif. "Polyus" is Russian for "pole," as in the north pole. "Skif" referred to the Scythians, an ancient tribe of warriors in central Asia—and the European equivalent of "barbarian."

According to Soviet space scholar Asif Siddiqi, a historian at Fordham University in New York City, Moscow began working on space-based weapons well before Reagan kicked the U.S. program into high gear with his March 23, 1983 Star Wars speech. "[The Soviets] funded two massive R&D studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s to explore how to counter imaginary American missile defense ideas," he says. Two concepts emerged: Skif—a laser "cannon" in orbit—and another weapon known as Kaskad (Cascade), designed to destroy an enemy's satellites with missiles fired from another craft in orbit.

Although some details about these programs leaked out in the mid-1990s, it was not until a few years ago, says Siddiqi, that the full extent of the space weapon plans became known, even in Russia. A former press officer in the Russian space industry, Konstantin Lantratov, pieced together the history of Polyus-Skif. "Lantratov managed to dig deep into the story, and his research clearly shows the enormous scale of these battle station projects," Siddiqi says. "These were not sideline efforts; this was a real space weapons program."

Design work began in the 1970s, not long after the symbolic Apollo-Soyuz "handshake in space" between NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. The famed Energia organization, which had built the Soyuz crew spacecraft as well as the giant N-1 moon rocket, a program that between 1969 and 1972 suffered four explosions, started studying both the Skif and the Kaskad concepts in 1976. Initially, Energia's plan was to use space-based weapons to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles early in flight, when they were still moving relatively slowly. The Salyut space stations, the first of which was launched in 1971, would serve as the core for either the laser-equipped Polyus spacecraft or the missile-armed Kaskad. The stations could be refueled in orbit and could house two cosmonauts for up to a week.

The designers quickly abandoned this plan, however, and with it the notion of having cosmonauts live on board the Polyus spacecraft. According to Lantratov, the Soviet Ministry of Defense determined that Soviet technology was not up to the challenge of shooting down ICBMs from space, and directed that Skif and Kaskad instead be used to disable American anti-missile satellites—which didn't yet exist, and hadn't even been approved.

Although the United States also had spent considerable amounts of money in the 1950s and 1960s trying to develop a missile defense system, by the mid-1970s this work was winding down, and during Jimmy Carter's presidency, progress on anti-missile systems was minimal. In 1972, both superpowers had signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited each to two anti-missile launch sites, one to defend the capital city and one to defend a single base from which ICBMs could be launched.

But the ABM Treaty forbade only the deployment of anti-missile weapons, not testing or development, a loophole both sides exploited. Beginning about 1980, when Reagan won the presidency, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (among them physicist Edward Teller, the so-called father of the H-bomb), along with researchers at other federal labs and a handful of military and civilian policymakers, began looking at "directed energy" weapons—which shoot beams instead of bullets—as a way to neutralize an increasing Soviet advantage in launchers and strategic missiles.

Reagan was taken with the idea, and three years later, in a televised speech on national security, he announced a plan to build a defensive shield to "make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete," essentially changing the nation's strategic posture from offense to defense. The proposal was immediately attacked by Democrats in Congress, who called it unworkable; it was the late Senator Ted Kennedy who tagged it with the moniker "Star Wars." Despite the skeptics, funding for missile defense increased dramatically, and reached nearly $3 billion a year by 1986.

As prominent planetary scientist and Gorbachev advisor Roald Sagdeev wrote in his 1994 memoir The Making of a Soviet Scientist , "If Americans oversold [the Strategic Defense Initiative], we Russians overbought it." In the summer after Reagan's Star Wars speech, Under Secretary of Defense Fred Iklé requested a CIA study on how the Soviets might respond. The work fell to three analysts, including Allen Thomson, a senior analyst working for the CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research. Thomson had studied other Soviet military research programs, including efforts to develop directed-energy weapons and sensors for space-based submarine detection.

He recalls: "The resulting study basically said that both politically and technically, the Soviets had a very wide range of options for responding to foreseeable U.S. SDI developments." They could build more ICBMs, try to thwart the American missile shield, or attempt to drum up international opposition to the American plan. "There was some recognition that the USSR might be financially strapped if it had to initiate new major weapons systems. But there was no indication that it would be unable to respond," Thomson says.

In fact, Reagan's SDI served as an instant kick in the pants for the Soviet space weapons program, giving the aerospace design bureaus the ammunition they needed to persuade the Politburo to increase funding for Polyus and Kaskad. Both projects had been simmering at the Salyut (now Khrunichev) bureau within Energia, and experiments with high-powered lasers for anti-missile work had been under way since 1981. So far the work had been confined to the laboratory, however. Now, in the wake of Reagan's speech, the rubles started flowing for actual flight hardware. The motive wasn't so much fear that the SDI might prevent Soviet missiles from reaching their targets, but something more ominous, and weirder: a conviction that the Americans were about to set up battle stations in space.

Paranoid fantasies weren't uncommon among senior Soviet generals, according to Peter Westwick, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who has written about science during the cold war. "They thought that maybe the [U.S.] space shuttle was going to be doing shallow dives into the atmosphere and deploying hydrogen bombs," he says.

Siddiqi elaborates on how the Soviets misinterpreted U.S. intentions for the space shuttle: "To the Soviets, the shuttle was the big thing. It was a sign to them that the Americans were about to move war into space." The official U.S. explanation was that the spaceplane, which debuted in 1981, was to provide routine access to orbit. By the mid-1980s, however, it was also being used to launch classified military satellites (see "Secret Space Shuttles," Aug. 2009). "The shuttle really scared the Soviets big-time because they couldn't figure why you would need a vehicle like that, one that made no economic sense," Siddiqi explains. "So they figured that there must be some unstated military rationale for the vehicle—for example, to deliver and recover large space-based weapons platforms, or to bomb Moscow." The Soviets responded to the perceived threat by building their own space shuttle, a near-exact copy of NASA's, which made a single flight and was then retired in 1993 (see "White Elephant," Dec. 2002/Jan. 2003).

Shortly after Reagan's speech, the Soviet Academy of Sciences was asked to assess whether a space-based missile shield was feasible. Evgeny Velikhov, a prominent physicist, led the study group. Their conclusion, says Westwick, was " ‘We looked at it, we studied it, we determined that it wouldn't work.' " But other Soviet scientists were more alarmist, and succeeded in convincing military and political leaders that even if the SDI wasn't an effective missile shield, it could be used offensively, to hit targets on the ground.

The idea of orbiting lasers shooting at Soviet territory was truly terrifying. According to Westwick, the theories that floated through the Kremlin about the real purpose of the SDI got batty: "Selective political assassination. Say the Politburo is standing outside on May Day and a single laser could take them all out…. These things are overhead, they're invisible, but with zero warning they could zap you."

With such frightening scenarios in mind, the Soviet military accelerated work on the Polyus-Skif laser cannon to destroy SDI satellites. Up until then, the plan had been to use a powerful laser built by the Astrofizika design bureau. But that program had fallen behind; the Astrofizika laser and its power systems were too big and heavy for existing rockets to launch. So when Soviet engineers were told to pick up the pace on Skif, they came up with an interim plan. They would adapt a small, one-megawatt carbon dioxide laser that had already been tested on an Il-76 transport aircraft as a weapon against missiles. In August 1984, the new spacecraft was approved and designated Skif-D, the "D" standing for the Russian word for "demonstration." By January 1986, the Politburo had designated the project as one of the Soviet space program's highest-priority satellites.

Meanwhile, U.S. scientists and engineers were having their own problems with space-based lasers. As research proceeded on projects like Zenith Star, which investigated the problems of placing a two-megawatt chemical laser in orbit, the challenges of building and launching such systems became clearer. The SDI organization funded studies of particle beams and an X-ray laser that would be set off by a nuclear explosion, but none of these projects ever came close to being deployed. By 1986 the SDI leadership was shifting its attention away from orbiting lasers and toward small "kinetic kill vehicles," which could bring down enemy satellites by crashing into them.

The Soviets, though, stayed the course, and kept working on the demonstration version of their space-based laser, with a target launch date of early 1987. Engineers at the Salyut design bureau soon realized that the laser and its power system—even the smaller one already tested on an aircraft—were still too big for the Proton rocket. But a bigger launcher was in the pipeline: The Energia rocket, named after its design bureau, was being built to carry the new Buran space shuttle into orbit. Energia could carry 95 tons to space, so it could carry Skif-D. The rocket was switched. To keep costs down, engineers looked for other existing hardware to modify and incorporate, including elements of Buran and a part of the canceled Almaz military space station designated the TKS, which later became the core module of the Mir space station.

Skif-D grew into a Frankenstein's monster: 131 feet long, more than 13 feet in diameter, and weighing 210,000 pounds, more massive than NASA's Skylab space station. The complex consisted of what the Russians called a "functional block" and a "purposeful module." The functional block was equipped with small rocket engines to place the vehicle into its final orbit. It also included a power system, using solar panels borrowed from Almaz. The purposeful module carried carbon dioxide tanks and two turbo-generators to produce the laser's power, as well as the heavy rotating turret, which pointed the beam. The Polyus spacecraft was built long and thin so that it could fit on the side of the Energia, attached to its central fuel tank.

Designing a laser cannon to work in orbit was no small engineering challenge. A hand-held laser pointer is a relatively simple, static device, but a big gas-powered laser is like a roaring locomotive. Powerful turbo-generators "pump" the carbon dioxide until its atoms become excited and emit light. The turbo-generators have large moving parts, and the gas used in the formation of the laser beam gets very hot, so it has to be vented. Moving parts and exhaust gases induce motion, which poses problems for spacecraft—particularly one that has to be pointed very precisely. The Polyus engineers developed a system to minimize the force of the expelled gas by sending it through deflectors. But the vehicle still required a complex control system to dampen motions caused by the exhaust gases, the turbo-generator, and the moving laser turret. (When firing, the entire spacecraft would be pointed at the target, with the turret making fine adjustments.)

The system was complicated enough that by 1985, the designers knew that testing its components would require more than one launch. The basic Skif-D1 spacecraft structure was proved out in 1987, while the laser wouldn't fly until Skif-D2, in 1988. Around the same time, another, related spacecraft went into development. Designated Skif-Stilet (Scythian-Stiletto), it was to be equipped with a weaker infrared laser based on an operational ground-based system. Skif-Stilet could only blind enemy satellites by targeting their optics. Polyus would have enough energy to destroy a spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

Work on these projects was proceeding at a furious pace throughout 1985 when an unexpected opportunity arose. The Buran shuttle had fallen behind schedule, and wouldn't be ready in time for the planned first launch of the Energia rocket in 1986. The rocket's designers were considering launching a dummy payload instead, and Skif's designers saw an opening: Why not test some of the components of their spacecraft earlier than scheduled?

They quickly drew up plans for a vehicle that would test the functional block's control system and additional components, like the gas ejection vents and a targeting system, consisting of a radar and a low-power fine pointing laser, that would be used in conjunction with the big chemical laser. They labeled the spacecraft Skif-DM, for "demonstration model." Launch was scheduled for fall 1986, which would not affect the launch of Skif-D1, planned for the summer of 1987.

Meeting such a tight deadline had a human cost. At one point, more than 70 firms within the Soviet aerospace industry were working on Polyus-Skif. In his history of the project, Lantratov quotes from an article by Yuri Kornilov, the lead Skif-DM designer at the Khrunichev Machine Building Factory: "As a rule, no excuses were accepted—not even the fact that it was almost the same group of people who, at that time, were performing the grandiose work associated with the creation of Buran. Everything took a back seat to meeting the deadlines assigned from the top."

The designers realized that once they launched the huge craft into space and it expelled large amounts of carbon dioxide, American intelligence analysts would observe the gas and quickly figure out that it was intended for a laser. So the Soviets switched to a combination of xenon and krypton for the Skif-DM venting test. These gases would interact with ionospheric plasma around Earth, and the spacecraft would appear to be part of a civilian geophysics experiment. Skif-DM would also be equipped with small inflatable balloon targets, mimicking enemy satellites, that would be jettisoned in flight and tracked with the radar and the pointing laser.

The launch of the demonstration satellite slipped to 1987, partly because the launch pad had to be modified to accommodate a rocket as heavy as Energia. The technical problems were relatively minor, but the delay had a critical impact on the project's political fortunes.

In 1986, Gorbachev, who had been general secretary of the Communist Party for only a year, was already advocating the sweeping economic and bureaucratic reforms that would come to be known as perestroika , or restructuring. He and his government allies were intent on reining in what they saw as ruinous levels of military spending, and had become increasingly opposed to the Soviet version of Star Wars. Gorbachev acknowledged that the American plan was dangerous, says Westwick, but warned that his country was becoming obsessed with it, and began challenging his advisors: "Maybe we shouldn't be so afraid of SDI."

In January 1987, with Skif-DM's launch just weeks away, Gorbachev's allies in the Politburo pushed through an order limiting what could be done during the demonstration flight. The spacecraft could be launched into orbit, but could not test the gas venting system or deploy any of the tracking targets. Even while the vehicle was on the pad, an order came down requiring several of the targets to be removed, but spacecraft engineers pointed out the dangers of interacting with a fueled rocket, and the order was canceled. Still, the number of experiments was reduced.

That spring, as the booster lay horizontally inside a vast assembly building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Skif-DM was mated to its Energia rocket. Technicians then painted two names on the spacecraft. One was "Polyus." The other was "Mir-2," for the proposed civilian space station that Energia's leadership hoped to build. According to Polyus historian Lantratov, that may have been less an attempt to fool foreign spies about the mission's purpose than an advertisement for the Energia company's new project.

The rocket was rolled out to the launch pad and hoisted to the vertical launch position. Then, on the night of May 15, 1987, Energia's engines lit and the giant rocket climbed into the sky. Whereas most launches from Baikonur head for an orbit inclined 52 degrees to the equator, Polyus-Skif traveled farther north, on a 65-degree inclination. If the worst happened, this heading would keep rocket stages and debris—or the entire Skif-DM—from falling on foreign territory.

The Energia rocket performed flawlessly, gaining speed as it rose and arced out toward the northern Pacific. But the kludged nature of the Skif–DM test spacecraft, along with all the compromises and shortcuts, spelled its doom. The satellite's functional block had originally been designed for the Proton launcher, and couldn't withstand the vibration of the Energia's more powerful engines. The solution had been to mount the spacecraft with the control block at the top instead of down near the engines. Essentially, it flew into space upside down. Once the spacecraft separated from its booster, it was supposed to flip around to point away from Earth, with the control block's engines facing down toward Earth, ready to fire and push the craft into orbit.

Skif-DM separated on cue, the spent Energia fell away, and the protective shroud over the front of the spacecraft separated. Then the entire spacecraft, as tall as a 12-story building, began its gentle pitch maneuver. Its tail end, actually the front of the spacecraft, swung up through 90 degrees, through 180 degrees…then kept going. The massive spacecraft tumbled end over end for two full revolutions, then stopped with its nose pointing down toward Earth. In the rush to launch such a complicated spacecraft, the designers had missed a tiny software error. The engines fired, and Skif-DM headed back into the atmosphere it had just escaped, quickly overheating and breaking into burning pieces over the Pacific Ocean.

In the West, the debut of the Energia super-rocket was reported as a partial success; though the satellite had failed, the launcher itself operated perfectly. The U.S. government almost certainly had intelligence sensors pointed at the rocket as it flew, but what the CIA or other agencies concluded about the payload remains classified.

The failure of Polyus-Skif, combined with its immense expense, gave the program's opponents the ammunition they needed to kill it. Further Skif flights were canceled. Hardware being prepared was either scrapped or shoved to the sides of giant warehouses. And the laser never got close enough to launching for anyone to judge whether it would have worked.

In his history of the project, Lantratov quotes Yuri Kornilov, the Skif-DM lead designer: "Of course, no one received any prizes or awards for their feverish, two-year-long, under-the-deadline work. The hundreds of teams that had created Polyus were not given an award or a word of thanks." In fact, after the Skif-DM fiasco, some were reprimanded or demoted.

We still don't know the entire story. "Even today, there's a lot of sensitivity about the whole program," says Siddiqi. "Russians don't like to talk too much about it. And our understanding of Soviet responses to SDI still remains murky. It's clear that there was a lot of internal debate within the Soviet military-industrial elite about the effectiveness of space weapons. And the fact that the Soviets came so close to actually launching a weapon platform suggests that the hardliners were in the driver's seat. It's scary to think what might have happened if Polyus had actually made it to orbit."

Russian space engineers, who are known for being pack rats, may have had the last laugh. The first component of the International Space Station to be launched was the Russian Zarya ("Dawn") module, also known as the Functional Cargo Block. The vehicle was built in the mid-1990s, under contract to NASA, by the enterprising engineers at the Khrunichev factory, who produced it on time and on budget. The main purpose of Zarya is to supply electrical power and to reboost the station, the same role the Skif's functional block would have served. Some Soviet space watchers believe that Zarya began life as a flight spare originally built for the Polyus program. Dusting off old but perfectly usable hardware—or even just blueprints—would certainly have helped Khrunichev meet its production schedule for the space station module during the economic chaos that prevailed in Russia after the cold war. It's only speculation, but if true, it would mean that the old Soviet Union ultimately succeeded in getting a tiny piece of its Star Wars system into orbit. The irony is that the American taxpayer picked up the tab.

Dwayne A. Day is a program officer with the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council. Robert G. Kennedy III is president of Ultimax Group Inc., in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The authors wish to thank Anton Smirnov for his assistance in translating the Lantranov article.

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Published Jul 5, 2021

The Fleet's In: 24th Century Federation Starships

Does your favorite ship make the cut?

StarTrek.com

For those of us who lovingly refer to ourselves as “starship nerds,” Star Trek 's 24th century is populated with an astounding array of Starfleet vessels for us to gaze upon with awe. The series and films set in this era, namely Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Voyager , Star Trek: Picard , and the four movies helmed by the TNG crew, produced vast fleets that demonstrated the Federation's prestigious shipbuilding capabilities.

Narrowing down choices, and ranking my favorites proved difficult enough, so we have excluded 23rd century holdovers (so no Excelsior -, Miranda -, Constellation -, and Oberth -class staples), non-Starfleet vessels such as Ambassador Spock's craft from Star Trek (2009) , the relatively diminutive Danube -class runabouts, and auxiliary shuttles. With that in mind, let's take a look at the ships that have been deployed from Utopia Planitia, Riverside, Beta Antares, Eridani A, and other Federation fleet yards.

10. Nova -class in Voyager

When the Nova -class U.S.S. Equinox first popped up on U.S.S. Voyager 's sensors in “Equinox,” Captain Janeway noted that the starship was a planetary research vessel designed for scientific missions rather than long-range tactical excursions. The Nova -class bore streamlined similarities to its larger Intrepid and Sovereign -class cousins, but its limited scope and small crew left it vulnerable to a lonely jaunt through the Delta Quadrant. If Captain Ransom had commanded a sturdier vessel, perhaps he would not have resorted to the deplorable tactics he employed to find a faster route home. However, the design apparently stood an excellent chance of enduring, as Captain Harry Kim sat in the center seat aboard the Nova -class variant U.S.S. Rhode Island in the alternate future seen in “Endgame.”

9. Ambassador -class in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine

The U.S.S. Enterprise-C remains the most well known Ambassador -class vessel due to its namesake, its prominence in the classic “Yesterday's Enterprise,” and its valiant rescue of the Klingon outpost on Narendra III from Romulan aggressors. Variants of this starship also notably appeared in Captain Picard's blockade during the Klingon Civil War, at the Battle of Wolf 359, and as a transport in “Data's Day.” The explorer's design proved to be an elegant mid-point between its Excelsior -class predecessors and Galaxy -class successors, and it would have been wonderful to see the vessel show up on a more frequent basis.

8. Prometheus -class in Voyager

Who can forget the stunning sight of the prototype U.S.S. Prometheus becoming three independent vessels as it separated into multi-vector assault mode during “Message in a Bottle?” The Prometheus 's computer and resident EMH informed Voyager 's doctor that the advanced ship was intended for deep space tactical assignments and could achieve speeds faster than any other member of the fleet. The pair of holographic physicians managed to wrest control of the Prometheus from Romulan hands and deploy its experimental defensive systems against Tal Shiar warbirds. While it is unknown if further Prometheus -class ships were constructed, the prototype was spotted again as part of the armada sent to intercept the Borg sphere in “Endgame.”

Star Trek Ships of the Line — U.S.S. Prometheus

7. Akira -class in Star Trek: First Contact , Deep Space Nine , and Voyager

First seen on screen in the Battle of Sector 001, the Akira -class's earliest chronological appearance occurred during a flashback at the Utopia Planitia shipyards in the Voyager episode “Relativity.” While no single starship of this design ever received an excessive amount of attention, numerous Akira -class vessels substantiated their worth in battle during the height of the Dominion War. From retaking Deep Space 9 in “Sacrifice of Angels” to assaulting Cardassia in “What You Leave Behind,” these resilient craft evidently became an instrumental element in Starfleet's defense forces by the end of the 2370s.

6. Inquiry -class in Picard

The imposing task force led by Captain Riker above Coppelius was composed of Inquiry-class vessels, including Riker's own U.S.S. Zheng He . Representing the most up-to-date Federation design of the 24th century, the reinstated captain described these ships as the toughest, fastest, and most powerful ones that Starfleet had ever produced up until that time. Although the entire fleet that confronted the Romulans in the Ghulion system fell into the Inquiry-class designation, there seemed to be two variants with differing nacelle configurations present. A whole armada of vessels more advanced than either the Galaxy - or Sovereign -classes? Now that is a majestic view to behold. I'd love to see a rundown of the entire roster of over 150 ships (by my latest count) that participated in Riker's defense formation.

5. Nebula -class in The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Voyager , Star Trek Generations , and Star Trek: First Contact

With primary hulls resembling those of its Galaxy -class counterparts, the Nebula -class explorers were featured heavily across multiple series and movies. Captain Maxwell demonstrated their tactical prowess as the U.S.S. Phoenix overwhelmed Cardassian targets in “The Wounded,” Data assumed temporary command over the U.S.S. Sutherland in “Redemption II,” the U.S.S. Farragut aided the U.S.S. Enterprise-D 's crew on Veridian III, and Professor Seyetik's U.S.S. Prometheus conducted solar experiments in “Second Sight.” The Nebula -class's diverse mission profile and extensive use over the years helped it secure such a high rank on our list.

4. Sovereign-class in Star Trek: First Contact , Star Trek: Insurrection , and Star Trek Nemesis

With its on screen credits confined to the U.S.S. Enterprise-E 's roles in the final three TNG films, the beautifully-fashioned Sovereig n-class is often considered to be an underutilized design by starship aficionados. However, given the class's appearances on background LCARS graphics in DS9, I would love to imagine that many Sovereigns were built and saw service somewhere just off-camera during those epic Dominion War battles. Geordi La Forge considered the Enterprise-E to be Starfleet's most advanced ship in 2373, and the new Federation flagship lived up to its reputation in engagements with the Borg, Son'a, and Praetor Shinzon's Scimitar . While not as voluminous as the Enterprise-D , Picard's latest command maintained a larger-than-life presence as it warped across the quadrant to extinguish diplomatic and strategic brush fires.

3. Defiant -class in Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: First Contact , and Voyager

Riker's legendary quip about a “tough little ship” perfectly encapsulates the Defiant -class's ability to contain such overpowered weapons and defensive shields within such a small spaceframe. Originally developed to combat the Borg (which the U.S.S. Defiant bravely did under Worf's leadership at the Battle of Sector 001), Captain Sisko's beloved flagship ultimately earned its fiercest accolades in clashes against the Jem'Hadar both before and during the Dominion War. The only member of Starfleet to be (unofficially) considered a warship and (legally) equipped with a cloaking device, the Defiant withstood everything that was thrown at it... until a Breen energy-dampening weapon brought about its untimely end. The U.S.S. São Paulo , fittingly renamed in honor of its sister ship Defiant , allowed Sisko to oversee the Dominion's final defeat at Cardassia from a familiar bridge.

2. Intrepid -class in Voyager and Deep Space Nine

Home to Captain Janeway and her crew for their entire venture through the Delta Quadrant, U.S.S. Voyager pioneered Starfleet's use of bio-neural circuitry, the Emergency Medical Hologram, and a warp core that managed a top cruising speed of warp 9.975. Of course, Voyager also reaped the unique benefit of Seven of Nine's Borg database, a valuable library that permitted them to add a finely-tuned astrometrics lab and the Delta Flyer to the ship's already impressive complement. Voyager' s capacity to outlast everyone from the Hirogen to the Devore in a firefight while still completing countless scientific surveys and first contact missions served as a testament to its durability. When Admiral Ross visited Romulus during the height of the Dominion War, even the high-ranking officer opted to travel on the Intrepid -class U.S.S. Bellerophon rather than any other craft.

1. Galaxy -class in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Picard , and Star Trek Generations

In what is sure to become a controversial decision, the Galaxy -class explorer tops our list of incredible Federation vessels. Despite early concerns over potential design flaws, the Enterprise-D and its sister ships acquitted themselves admirably from TNG's opening moments through Voyager 's return to Earth. Whether hosting dignitaries or being transported to regions beyond the Milky Way's confines, the Enterprise-D acted as a home and refuge for its crew and their families. Although the U.S.S. Odyssey fell in the Federation's first skirmish with the Jem'Hadar, other Galaxy-class starships held the line against the Dominion throughout the war. In the alternate version of 2390 depicted in “Timeless,” the U.S.S. Challenger remained in service under Captain Geordi La Forge. If the Galaxy -class is good enough for Starfleet's most accomplished 24th-century engineer, who am I to disagree?

Star Trek Ships of the Line — U.S.S. Enterprise

Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer who contributes articles to the official Star Trek website and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and the official Star Wars website. Jay also serves as a part-time assistant and consultant advising many actors and creatives who work on his favorite sci-fi shows and films. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @StobiesGalaxy.

Star Trek: Picard streams on Paramount+ in the United States,  n Canada on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave, and on Amazon Prime Video in more than 200 countries and territories.

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NADEZHDA USTINOVA SPECIAL TO RBTH

The star wars chronicles in russia, from the ussr to the present, a long time ago, in a country far far away, which no longer exists on the political map of the world... star wars was not released in movie theaters..

"Once we received a notice from the U.S. Consulate General about the legitimacy of the clips. But since the program was very popular, the consulate did us a favor and let us continue showing the film in pieces."

Anthony Daniels

Text by Nadezhda Ustinova, edited by Joe Crescente Image credits: Ilia Pitalev / RIA Novosti, kinopoisk.ru, press photos, personal archives Design and layout by Ekaterina Chipurenko © 2015 All Right Reserved. Russia Beyond The Headlines. [email protected]

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A USA flag is seen painted in graffiti on a concrete wall with hand prints in red that suggest blood on hands in this 3-d illustration.

Set hand drawn, doodle, oil, barrel, bucket, ....

Expressionist panel on an anti-war theme. Abstract hand drawing with many silhouettes, shapes, stripes and polygons. Five textured images in thin white frames.

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