History Main / RetroRocket

While once the definitive spaceship image, nowadays you generally only see these as parody or homage. Their typically phallic shape is a common target for mockery. However, with the advent of vertically landing reusable rockets and cold-formed stainless for rocket hulls, this design is now starting to become VindicatedByHistory.

While once the definitive spaceship image, nowadays you generally only see these as parody or homage. Their typically phallic shape is a common target for mockery. However, with the advent of vertically landing reusable rockets, this design is now starting to become VindicatedByHistory.

During different eras people had different stereotypical visions of alien spacecraft. Sometimes it came from the movies and sometimes it bled into the movies from real life. This design is a classic — it's the standard classic pointy-nosed sits-on-its-fins spaceship. This piece of RaygunGothic comes from the time when T-bird fins were actually seen as futuristic rather than retro. Spaceships were more likely to be referred to as rocketships by excited seven year old boys and the designs could feed off the ongoing space race and concurrent developments which were based around a long steel tube with a pointy tip that had fins on the bottom and belched flames out of its base to reach for the skies.

* ''VideoGame/Rymd-Resa'' has one of these among the eight ships you available for you to pilot, along with a FlyingSaucer, to boot.

* ''VideoGame/RymdResa'' has one of these among the eight ships you available for you to pilot, along with a FlyingSaucer, to boot.

* In ''Gene Wars'' the main design of humanoid spaceships is a classic futuristic rocket, seen between levels, when you start a level, and when you grab more or different specialists.

* In ''Rolo to the Rescue'', Rolo takes a brief excursion to the moon on a ''wooden'' rocket.

* ''RymdResa'' has one of these among the eight ships you available for you to pilot, along with a FlyingSaucer, to boot.

* Although the whole rocket won't go to space, the spacecraft/rocket company [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX SpaceX]] plans to make a reusable version of their Falcon 9 launch vehicle, with its two stages returning to and landing back at the launch site on their tails, with rocket propulsion and landing gear.
** However, [=SpaceX=]'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA Interplanetary Transport System]] (now currently known as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 "BFR"]]) concept is basically the closest thing to a modernized version of the Retro Rocket. Both the first stage and the interplanetary spacecraft on top are designed to land in a tailsitting configuration. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wrk5u8FgbM redesign]] unveiled in September 2018 even [[TruthinTelevision sits on its fins]]!
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship SpaceX Starship]] heavily resembles this trope; although it's meant to launch on top of a detachable booster, the upper stage looks very much like the archetypal "rocketship". The proposed design even has a stainless steel hull, giving it the classic [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Starship_Mk1.jpg chromed-out look]].

* The use of this design for sci-fi spacecraft in the post-1945 period would have been heavily influenced by what was known about German V-weapons: until the late 1950's, the V-2's were the only man-made rockets that had ever been outside the boundaries of Earth's atmosphere, albeit only to gain enough height on the way up to describe a parabola with sufficient momentum to bring them down over London. The drawing-board designs for even larger rockets capable of hitting New York or Moscow were also public-domain knowledge. The V-2 was in every visible respect a retro-rocket of tail sitter configuration ... except it wasn't meant to land.

** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship SpaceX Starship]] heavily resembles this trope; although it's meant to launch on top of a detachable booster, the upper stage looks very much like the archetypal "rocketship". The proposed design even has a stainless steel hull, giving it the classic [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship#/media/File:Starship_Mk1.jpg chromed-out look]].

* ''Rocketship Voyager'' is ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi magazine story. The United Nations Rocket Ship ''Voyager'' is a [[AntiMatter contraterrene]]-powered torchship explicitly described as a cigar-shaped tailsitter. In one scene, B'Elanna Torres is PlanningWithProps while explaining the theory of FasterThanLightTravel.

* ''Rocketship Voyager'' is ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi magazine story. The United Nations Rocket Ship ''Voyager'' is a [[AntiMatter contraterrene]]-powered torchship that can go from Earth to Pluto in just over a month, but has never gone outside the Solar System until aliens transport it to the other side of the galaxy. In one scene, B'Elanna Torres is PlanningWithProps while explaining the theory of FasterThanLightTravel.
-->"Imagine this is ''Voyager''..." B'Elanna picked up her spoon, then reconsidered, replacing it with the squeeze-tube which was more appropriate to ''Voyager'''s shape.

* These are used for most factions in ''TabletopGames/WarRocket'', complete with {{Flying Saucer}}s for aliens, though they still have a fore-and-aft design that ensures that they work like the rockets anyway.

* Most adaptations of ''Flash Gordon'' would obviously have these, including the new ''TabletopGames/SavageWorlds'' - based RPG.

* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'s'' rocket from [[Recap/TintinDestinationMoon "Destination Moon"]] and [[Recap/TintinExplorersOnTheMoon "Explorers on the Moon"]] is an interesting case as it's combined with a [[ShownTheirWork frighteningly prescient]] depiction of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar space program. [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3p.html#tintin Blueprints and launchpad shown here.]] The plot is only [[DuelingMovies slightly similar]] to the American film of the same year, and the rocket's external appearance is based on the German V2. An elaborate inflight maneuver has to be performed to ensure that it lands with its tail side down.

* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'s'' rocket from [[Recap/TintinDestinationMoon "Destination Moon"]] and [[Recap/TintinExplorersOnTheMoon "Explorers on the Moon"]] is an interesting case as it's combined with a [[ShownTheirWork frighteningly prescient]] depiction of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar space program. [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3p.html#tintin Blueprints and launchpad shown here.]] The plot is only [[DuelingMovies slightly similar]] to the American film of the same year, and the rocket's external appearance is based on the German V2.

* ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'': The Techno Union Hardcell-class ships.

** ''Haredevil Hare''. Bugs [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-3rzM8a0f0 is sent to the Moon]] in what he calls a "flying cigar."

* The anthology ''Old Mars'', edited by Creator/GeorgeRRMartin and Gardner Dozois which homages PlanetaryRomance stories set on Mars, has a rocketship [[http://www.georgerrmartin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/oldmars.jpg on the cover.]]

A few features are particularly common. The design will often necessitate a vertical take off and the fins often are used for the rocket to stand on, leading to one of the style's alternate names: "tailsitters". Thus many will have three or four fins. Also, unlike modern rockets, these typically don't discard stages to lighten their load for the trip, so the entire rocket goes into space and back. Note that in a setting with both in space, this spacecraft design was generally used by humans. Aliens generally used its nemesis — the FlyingSaucer. For the modern equivalent, see StandardHumanSpaceship.

* ''Gene Wars''
* Captain Blasto, from ''VideoGame/Blasto'', uses a retro rocket as his main source of transportation.

** However, UsefulNotes/{{SpaceX}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA Interplanetary Transport System]] (now currently known as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 "BFR"]]) concept is basically the closest thing to a modernized version of the Retro Rocket. Both the first stage and the interplanetary spacecraft on top are designed to land in a tailsitting configuration. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wrk5u8FgbM redesign]] unveiled in September 2018 even [[TruthinTelevision sits on its fins]]!