The United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, and United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) use a hull classification symbol to identify their ships by type and by individual ship within a type. The system is analogous to the pennant number system that the Royal Navy and other European and Commonwealth navies use.
Rocket Ship Galileo, a juvenile science-fiction novel by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1947, features three teenagers who participate in a pioneering flight to the Moon. It was the first in the Heinlein juveniles, a long and successful series of science-fiction novels published by Scribner's. Heinlein originally envisioned the novel as the first of a series of books called "Young Rocket Engineers". Publishers initially rejected the script, judging going to the Moon as "too far out".
Flag terminology is the nomenclature, or system of terms, used in vexillology, the study of flags, to describe precisely the parts, patterns, and other attributes of flags and their display.
A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteristics: floatplanes and flying boats; the latter are generally far larger and can carry far more. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are in a subclass called amphibious aircraft, or amphibians. Seaplanes were sometimes called hydroplanes, but currently this term applies instead to motor-powered watercraft that use the technique of hydrodynamic lift to skim the surface of water when running at speed.
HMS Centurion was the second of four King George V-class dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s. She spent the bulk of her career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. Aside from participating in the failed attempt to intercept the German ships that had bombarded Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in late 1914, and the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, her service during the First World War generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea.
The Cylons are a race of sentient robots in the Battlestar Galactica science fiction franchise, whose primary goal is the extermination of the human race. Introduced in the original 1978 series, they also appear in the 1980 sequel series, the 2004–2009 reboot series, and the spin-off prequel series Caprica.
Renegade Legion is a series of science fiction games that were designed by Sam Lewis, produced by FASA, and published from 1989 to 1993. The line was then licensed to Nightshift games, a spin-off of the garage company Crunchy Frog Enterprises by Paul Arden Lidberg, which published one scenario book, a gaming aid, and three issues of a fanzine-quality periodical before reverting the license.
The Ark is the sixth serial of the third season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 5 to 26 March 1966.
Battle Engine Aquila is a 2003 video game for PlayStation 2 and Xbox developed by Lost Toys and published by Infogrames Europe. In the game the player pilots the Battle Engine for the Forseti military in their wars against the Muspell to decide who will rule what's left of the world. Battle Engine Aquila received little attention from the public despite overall good reviews from critics. It was listed as #86 in the Top 100 Games for PlayStation 2 by IGN. A later Microsoft Windows port was published by Encore Software.
The Silver Branch is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1957, with illustrations by Charles Keeping. Set in Britain in the last decade of the 3rd century, it is the story of Justin and Flavius, two cousins in the Roman legions who find themselves in the intrigue and battle surrounding the struggles between Carausius, a self-proclaimed emperor in Britain, Allectus, Carausius's treasurer, and Constantius, emperor in Rome.
Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans is a film spin-off of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was released direct-to-video in 1995 and was produced by the independent production company Dreamwatch Media, a division of Dreamwatch magazine. Initially available only through mail order and specialty shops, it was subsequently released to retail by Reeltime Pictures in 1997. It features two races of aliens, the Sontarans and the Rutans. The Sontarans and Rutans were licensed from the estate of their creator Robert Holmes, although the appearance of the Sontarans had to be modified to avoid legal complications with the BBC, which owned the design of the creatures.
"Kang Dynasty", sometimes called "Kang War", is a 16 part comic book storyline which ran through Avengers #41–55 and Avengers Annual 2001 between June 2001 and August 2002. It was written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by a number of artists including Alan Davis, Kieron Dwyer, Ivan Reis and Manuel Garcia.
Sins of a Solar Empire is a 2008 science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Ironclad Games and published by Stardock Entertainment for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that incorporates some elements from 4X games; its makers describe it as "RT4X". Players are given control of a spacefaring empire in the distant future, and are tasked with conquering star systems using military, economic and diplomatic means.
An armilla was an armband awarded as a military decoration to soldiers of ancient Rome for conspicuous gallantry. Legionary (citizen) soldiers and non-commissioned officers below the rank of centurion were eligible for this award, but non-citizen soldiers were not. Unlike legionaries, auxiliary common soldiers did not receive individual decorations, though auxiliary officers did. However, a whole auxiliary regiment could be honoured by a title as an equivalent award, which in this case would be armillata, or be granted Roman citizenship en masse as a reward. This entitled an auxiliary regiment to add the appellation civium Romanorum to its list of honours.
Invisibility in fiction is a common plot device in stories, plays, films, animated works, video games, and other media, found in both the fantasy and science fiction genres. In fantasy, invisibility is often invoked and dismissed at will by a person, with a magic spell or potion, or a cloak, ring or other object. Alternatively, invisibility may be conferred on an unsuspecting person by a sorcerer, witch, or curse. In science fiction, invisibility is often conferred on the recipient as part of a complex technological or scientific process that is difficult or impossible to reverse, so that switching back and forth at frequent intervals is less likely to be depicted in science fiction. Depending on whether the science fiction is hard science fiction or soft science fiction, the depictions of invisibility may be more rooted in actual or plausible technologies, or more on the fictional or speculative end of the spectrum.
Zhiyuan was a protected cruiser built for the Imperial Chinese Navy. She was built by Armstrong Whitworth in Elswick, England. She was one of two Zhiyuan-class protected cruisers built, alongside her sister ship Jingyuen. Zhiyuan was armed with a smaller number of large sized naval guns, as opposed to later ships of this type which carried a larger number of smaller guns. This was because the medium-calibre quick-firing gun had yet to be introduced, thus a warship's firepower at the time was largely a function of individual shell weight rather than volume of fire. Both ships were assigned to the Beiyang Fleet, and she was captained by Deng Shichang throughout her life.
Lego Mars Mission was a Lego subtheme to Lego Space that sold from 2007 to 2009. It is set on Mars and features astronauts, aliens, and high-tech machinery.
The Eagle is a 2011 epic historical drama film set in Roman Britain directed by Kevin Macdonald, and starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland. Adapted by Jeremy Brock from Rosemary Sutcliff's historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), the film tells the story of a young Roman officer attempting to recover the lost Roman eagle standard of his father's legion in Caledonia. The story is based on the Ninth Spanish Legion's supposed disappearance in Britain. Historically, the purported disappearance of the Ninth Legion in Northern Britain is a subject of debate.
The Lilac Ball is a 1988 Soviet science-fiction children's film starring Natalya Guseva as Alisa Selezneva, a character she had previously played in the TV miniseries Guest from the Future.
Centurions is an American science fiction animated television series produced by Ruby-Spears and was animated in Japan by Nippon Sunrise's Studio 7. The series began in 1986 as a five-part mini-series and was followed with a 60-episode series. The series was story edited by Ted Pedersen and written by several authors, including prolific science fiction writers Michael Reaves, Marc Scott Zicree, Larry DiTillio and Gerry Conway.
