History Main / SpaceIsAnOcean

* A spacecraft can be caught in an [[SwirlyEnergyThingy "ion storm"]] or [[NegativeSpaceWedgie the like]], which will toss it hither and thither and ultimately run it aground on a strange exotic uncharted planet. [[note]]Ion storms ''are'' a real phenomenon, but they don't work like ocean storms; an ion storm is simply an unusually intense burst of solar wind.[[/note]]

In SpaceOpera, ScienceFantasy and SteamPunk {{Fantasy}} genres, writers are fond of filling Space with aether streams and solar winds, even magical ships with {{Solar Sail}}s that ''literally'' "sail" through the Void.[[note]]Solar winds and sails are an actual thing. Bill Nye, for one, took part in a program that launched a small craft into space that, once up there, used a solar sail (essentially a large mirror made of mylar) to 'catch' the minuscule pressure imparted by reflected sunlight. Solar winds, streams of electromagnetically charged plasma emitted by stars, provide orders of magnitude less "push" per surface area than the light pressure used by a reflective solar sail, but can also be used for propulsion with very different setups known as electric sails and magnetic sails. Rather than being driven by the impact of particles against physical sheets of material, these use [[DeflectorShields "virtual sails" of electromagnetic field]] generated by large antennae to catch the electromagnetic "push" that drives the solar wind. Prototypes have been successfully tested, and while simple reflective solar sail is simpler and requires no internal power, electromagnetic sail's have numerous advantages including lower weight, higher acceleration, and larger operating ranges from a star.[[/note]] In those cases, you may find you can even [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace breathe in Space]], and if you're lucky you can even ignore the [[ExplosiveDecompression vacuum.]] Characterization and plot may also come straight out of the archetypes created during the era of WoodenShipsAndIronMen as well -- including intrepid explorers, [[LostColony lost colonies]], [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe an exotic beauty in every port]], SpacePirates, and sightings of the majestic SpaceWhale.

To some extent, Space Is An Ocean is a JustifiedTrope: not only was space thought to be some kind of fluid until the turn of The20thCentury[[note]]The fluid was called "luminiferous aether"; physicists knew they couldn't detect it, but thought that they simply did not have the technical skill to do so at the time. We later discovered that the reason aether couldn't be detected is because it doesn't exist. This wasn't because they were stupid back then and couldn't imagine empty space -- it's because they were sure light waves needed a medium (such as air or water) to propagate through, just as sound waves do. As it turns out, light behaves as both wave and particle, making it possible for light to travel through the vacuum of space like any other matter.[[/note]], but seafarers long ago evolved the organizational techniques necessary to safely operate a self-sufficient vessel in a potentially hostile environment for an extended period of time, and it makes more sense to adopt nautical administrative and logistic features (and the terms for them) instead of inventing everything from scratch.

As science fiction (and the aviation industry) has matured, SpaceIsAir has become a complement to Space Is An Ocean. Typically, large ships like TheBattlestar will be based on naval craft, while smaller craft like the SpaceFighter will be treated like aircraft. The two are not mutually exclusive -- far from it, applying the tropes to different vehicles allows writers to recreate UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (particularly the Pacific theater, with its pioneering of large-scale naval aviation) {{Recycled IN SPACE}}, which is pretty cool, as it allows using the tactics of the OldSchoolDogfight and having to close to [[SeeTheWhitesOfTheirEyes broadside range]] with capital ship guns. Land transport metaphors tend to fall flat. Elements of road vehicles are generally PlayedForLaughs; if a spacecraft has a [[DrivingStick manual transmission]], it's a sure sign that RuleOfFunny is a prime consideration. There is, however, a small but generally serious set of aversions (some listed below) that imagine space as a railroad instead -- ranging from literal portrayals of trains in space to plots that take their inspiration from real-life railroad history.

Lots of speculative fiction in all media depict spaceships designed to land on water, since an ocean provides what amounts to an infinite runway with a similarly infinite capacity for absorbing the heat of re-entry. Some examples include the Bebop from ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', the Seeker from David Brin's Startide Rising, most of the Space shuttles in Jerry Pournelle's Literature/CoDominium series, and the actual Apollo spacecraft sent to the moon (as well as the Mercury and Gemini spaceships that preceded Apollo) as well as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft) Huygens probe]] sent to Titan, Saturn's largest moon[[note]]This one not for that reason, but instead because it was not known if it would land on solid terrain or a (methane) ocean. It found the former[[/note]].

* Both move in three dimensional space.

* ''Anime/InfiniteRyvius'': The series takes place after the Solar System is given a NegativeSpaceWedgie. The result is the "Sea of Geduld" ([[GratuitousGerman from the German word for "patience"]]), a nebula-like cloud engulfing the bottom half of the ecliptic plane. Ships that go too far -- "deep", you might say -- inside are crushed by the radiation and gravity anomalies, unless they're built to withstand the "dive". In other words, submarines in space.

** ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato2199'' takes this almost literally but justifies the design of the ship as a method of camouflage during construction. However it regularly averts TwoDSpace with Yamoto being attacked from below or surprised from above...then again it also has sub-space submarines.

* ''Anime/NightOnTheGalacticRailroad'': The travel mode is a train.
* The opening in ''Manga/OutlawStar'' 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.

* In ''Literature/StarshipOperators'', 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".
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' used Army ranks, while using terms that seem to be a combination of nautical and atmospheric flight along with some new ones. This could easily be explained by the fact that star travel is still really quite new -- they have some orbital colonies, a base on the moon, and a space station in the asteroid belt.

* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': Taken very literally in an early issue. 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 you 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.
* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' story ''ComicBook/TheLivingLegendsOfSuperman'': In the 21st century, astronauts are naval pilots serving in the navy and are called sailors. And their ships are explictly compared with ships floating "on the oceans of Earth".
* One French comic took the RecycledInSpace route with ''Literature/MobyDick'': the whalers become AsteroidMiners, the harpoons become ten-megaton nuclear warheads, the giant squid is a white dwarf, and Moby Dick is a sentient comet.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The concept that space is ocean-like informs the design of Uvo's fleet of spacecraft which manage to look both fish-like and like modified submarines.
** Given a nod in ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'' where all of the Sangtee Empire space ships, from fighters to freighters, look like mechanical fish. The only exception are their giant space faring cities which instead look like cities in giant bubbles.

!!!'''In General:'''

!!!'''By Work:'''
* It is noticeable, at the beginning of the film ''Film/{{Alien}}'', that as the Nostromo leaves planetary orbit, it does so to a swelling soundtrack reminiscent of a classical nautical adventure movie -- the music evokes a tall stately sail-ship leaving port rather than a beat-up cargo ship setting off into space.
* Walt Disney's movie ''Film/TheBlackHole'' is a version of Creator/JulesVerne's classic novel ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' set [[RecycledINSPACE in space]]. 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 ''Film/TheFifthElement'' 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 [[SpaceSailing shaped like a steam paddle boat]], and has a classical ''nautical steering wheel'' to make ''course corrections''. The "borders" of the Solar System also have floating buoys in [[TwoDSpace a single plane]].
* In ''Film/TheManFromPlanetX'' an astronomer says, "The only difference between water and space is a matter of density."

* ''Franchise/StarWars''. Though 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 ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' where Obi-Wan Kenobi is forced to dodge seismic charges (read: depth charges) that make a loud [[PlanarShockwave "sonic" boom]] in a ''vacuum'' and send out a horizontally expanding shockwave.
** The space battle that opens ''Star Wars Episode III: Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' takes this to an extreme, with kilometres-long spaceships side by side, firing broadsides at each other like ships of the line from the Age of Sail. Any doubt as to what the scene was trying to evoke was removed when you saw the ''gun crews'' loading and firing their giant blaster cannon through force-field gun ports. There's no excuse for the gun crews and gun ports, but the side-by-side combat is excusable: the battle takes place in the orbit of the Republic's capital planet. The attackers are not there for conquest but a raid and kidnapping; for that they have to get close to the planet to land ground troops safely.
** In ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' when Rebel vessels and Imperial Star Destroyers trade blasterfire during the final climactic space battle, with fighters streaming past in the foreground. This is justified however, in that the Rebel fleet is being fired on -- with devastating results -- by the Death Star. Their best chances at survival is to close in to short range with the Imperial Fleet. That way, the Death Star can't shoot at them without hitting the Imperial Fleet. As Lando says to Admiral Ackbar "Maybe we can take a few of them with us!"
** Star Destroyers seem to array most of their guns in a top-turret and broadside position, making them comically vulnerable to anyone coming in from behind or below them.
** This is abused in ''[[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars The Clone Wars]]'' when Ahsoka orders her ship to face the bottom at the enemy, thus rendering all damage to non-vital areas of the ship. (The concept being taken from ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy''.)
** The idea of giant space-dwelling "sea" monsters is also used throughout the franchise, resulting in creatures such as the nebula-dwelling neebray mantas in ''The Clone Wars'', the purrgil (octopus-tentacled {{Space Whale}}s in ''Westernanimation/StarWarsRebels'') and the titanic, jellyfish-like summa-verminoth in ''Film/{{Solo}}''. ''Solo'' further features the Akkadese Maelstrom -- the summa-verminoth's home -- a perpetual space storm filled with roving carbon-bergs and a gravity well analogous to a giant whirlpool, making it effectively a space version of Scylla and Charybdis from ''Literature/TheOdyssey''.
* ''Film/ThisIslandEarth''. Even the ''title'' is an example. Actually, during the space travel scene, the alien UFO does a very non-nautical manuever to dodge an asteroid, tilting right 90 degrees while gravity inside the ship remained the same.
* The film version of ''Film/WingCommander'', ridiculously bad as it was, did do an interesting variation on this trope. In it, space was like an ocean, but spaceships were more akin to ''submarines'' than sailing ships (to the point that the crew was told to make no noise to avoid detection). Missiles had to be loaded into great honking tubes after the auto-loaders were said to have broken down from battle damage, they had depth-charge-like weapons.
** Additionally, the missiles had to be fired manually by the loading crews on command from TheBridge instead of a single button on said bridge. Interestingly, the final space battle between the ''[[CoolShip 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]].
** The {{Space Fighter}}s, though, looked more like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII fighters with a computer and a HUD and wouldn't look out of space with propellers on the front. They also, for some reason, include jump drives, even though they're never expected to perform jumps. 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.

* Used in ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'' by Creator/CharlesStross to justify shooting [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot digital communist lobsters]] into space. They want to return to the ocean, but as digital entities that's not possible. Putting them in a space ship's computer and launching it into space, however...
* ''Literature/{{Airborn}}'': In the final book, ''Starclimber'', space and its native life are portrayed as analogues to an immense ocean and marine life. This includes "space plankton", "barnacles" which grow on the cable of the space elevator the characters are using, and immense, bioluminescent, eel-like {{Space Whale}}s. The characters' speculations about the nature of the cosmos cast planetary system as shallow waters and deep space as the open ocean and its abysses, where creatures much larger than the ones they saw might lurk.
* ''Literature/AlexisCarew'' leans ''really'' hard on the WoodenShipsAndIronMen [-InSpace-] styling. [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Darkspace]] is treated as the open sea, complete with shoals and storms. SpaceSailing is done by harnessing its currents, and ships navigate by dead reckoning and fight in broadside duels using hand-loaded single-shot laser cannons aimed by eye (because darkspace dampens electricity and otherwise resists any attempts to study it). The landlubber protagonist is also often befuddled in the first book by the constant use of archaic naval terminology:
-->'''Alexis:''' ''(reading the name of a structural segment off her tablet)'' "Forward-twelve-port, first ''[[InherentlyFunnyWords futtock]]''"? Now you're just making things up!
* The novel ''Berserker Fury'' '''is''' the UsefulNotes/WorldWarII naval Battle of Midway RecycledINSPACE! 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.
* Creator/GeneWolfe's ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' relies heavily on this. Space crafts are described as ships, the crew are called "sailors" and so on, to the point where it's often not clear whether the narrator is talking about seafaring or space travel. In the [[{{Sequel}} coda]] ''Urth of the New Sun'', the interstellar space ship turns out to have masts and sails, and to apparently be made partly of wood.
** In ''Literature/TheBookOfTheNewSun'', the ships of the Hierodules travel through time and between Universes on mirrored sails. The terminology used is nautical to the extent that Creator/GeneWolfe [[DirectLineToTheAuthor expresses frustration]] that Severian draws no distinction between nautical and space vessels. Indeed, sailors themselves apparently find the two sorts of vessel interchangeable for employment.
--> If a distant continent is as remote as the moon, then the moon is no more remote than a distant continent.

** Drake's ''Reaches'' novels (''Igniting the Reaches'', ''Through the Breach'', and ''Fireships'') are Hakluyt's ''Voyages'' crossed with the adventures of Sir Francis Drake during the wars with Spain. It's 16th century exploration & piracy IN SPACE.
** ''Literature/TheCitizenSeries'': Habitable planets are regarded as islands in the "sea" that is the Continuum, a sea which has currents that can speed or slow travel. The Bight between the Cutter Stream Colonies and their parent Home World, Brasilia, stands in for the Atlantic Ocean in particular, with mentions of a circular Continuum current that corresponds to the Easterlies and Westerlies. Unusually, though, the series also includes "trackways" that can be built across the Continuum to artificially stabilize currents (space roads), and Continuum combat behaves like UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII dogfighting.
* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/TheDreamQuestOfUnknownKadath'' provides and early and very literal example of the trope. In the Dreamlands it is possible to reach the outer space simply by sailing over [[FlatWorld the edge of the world]] in a craft capable of surviving the rushing waters, and going on straight. The protagonist is kidnapped by a sinister crew of semi-human slave traders and taken captive to the Moon in this manner.
* A note: despite 'Navigators', and a feudal setting, ''Franchise/{{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 from orbital skirmishes due to the Guild (who are neutral) monopoly on interstellar travel.
** There are elements of this in the ''Literature/LegendsOfDune'' prequel novels with [[CanonDiscontinuity disputed canonicity]], which features plenty of space battles between the League Armada (later Army of Humanity) and the [[AIIsACrapshoot Thinking Machines]]. Unusual for this setting, though, the military ranks in use are all made up and, in fact, change throughout the trilogy. For example, the equivalent of a general would be a Primero (League Armada), a Bashar (Army of Humanity), and a Caid (post-Jihad). These fictional army ranks are also used by ship officers. Strangely, the novels have generals command both ground and space battles. One would think these would be two completely different types of combat, requiring different skillsets (you wouldn't put a naval admiral in charge of a ground battle or an army general in command of a fleet, would you?).
* In ''Literature/EndersShadow'', Bean arrives at Battle School and goes exploring. He remarks: "Most poles and ladderways would merely let you pass between floors -- no, they called them decks; this was the International Fleet and so everything pretended to be a ship." 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."
* ''Literature/TheExpanse'' embraces the trope of stellar navies with both the United Nations Navy and the Martian Congressional Republic Navy, each with their UN Marines and MCRN Marines respectively. The decks of the ships are perpendicular to the direction of travel, with thrust from acceleration and deceleration providing the g-forces used to keep people on the deck (and magnetic boots when not under acceleration).
* Wet-navy terminology is heavily used in ''Literature/TheFlightEngineer'', as might be expected from a trilogy coauthored by Creator/JamesDoohan. Space itself is not an ocean, however, and at one point the series delivers a hilarious TakeThat to the ''Series/{{Star Trek|TheOriginalSeries}}'' episode where Roddenberry confused the ''Enterprise'' with a submarine.
* Played straight in ''Literature/FutureHistory'', complete with [[SpaceClouds Space Clouds]], [[SpaceFriction Space Friction]], and a [[StandardSciFiFleet Standard SciFi Fleet]].
* ''Creator/HarryHarrison'':

** Harrison made a habit of this. In ''Space Viking'', the structure of a spaceship is discussed in some detail, with the command center deep inside. During the space battles, the crew are well aware that attack can come from ''any'' angle, and keep eyes-high accordingly. Captain and other crew ranks are used.
* While the design of his spacecraft reflect a working knowledge of engineering, almost every book Creator/RobertAHeinlein 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.
** This is especially noticeable in his "Juvenile" novels that involved commercial or military space travel such as: ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/CitizenOfTheGalaxy'', ''Literature/FarmerInTheSky'', ''Literature/SpaceCadetHeinlein'' and ''Literature/StarmanJones''.

* Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' series makes liberal use of naval metaphors in its space travel, including fleets of private merchant vessels that deliver goods from planet to planet on a monthly schedule, and "passenger liners" that do the same for people. It retains some of the metaphors of naval combat, although not all: starship combat is generally done at great distances with lightspeed or FTL weapons, but the notion of a StandardSciFiFleet along with {{Space Fighter}}s remains intact. The series does not, however, make the mistake of having spaceships look like oceanfaring vessels; quite the opposite: a KK-drive starship resembles a toilet plunger or a wineglass stuck onto an oblong main hull; the end of the "plunger" is the fan for an ArtificialGravity generator.
* Played straight in ''Literature/IntoTheLookingGlass'' novel ''Vorpal Blade'' by Creator/JohnRingo. Humanity's only spaceship is a converted nuclear submarine. He also speculates that there are "standing gravity waves" in interstellar space; the space equivalent of oceanic currents.
* In ''Literature/LandoCalrissianAndTheStarcaveOfThonBoka'', there is a species of giant rays that live in vacuum and consider it an ocean. The opening passage of the novel describes space as though it were an ocean.
* This is one of the defining characteristics of the {{Literature/Larklight}} book series. Not only do (most) spacecraft strongly resemble sailing ships, space is also populated with a wide variety of ''fish'' that even grow increasingly stranger the further away they are from the sun, much like deep-sea fish on Earth.
* In ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series, there is a SpaceNavy with a StandardSciFiFleet using 20th-century ship types (e.g. destroyers, cruisers, battleships). Enlisted men and women are often called sailors. And even terms like "port" and "starboard" still survive. However, during the Battle of Kaliban, a civilian character asks Geary about the use of these terms as well as "up" and "down" in space, especially since the main body of the fleet is, at that point, inverted from the perspective of the rest of the ships. Geary explains that "up" and "down" are conventional directions with respect to the ecliptic (as long as it's determined ahead of time which hemisphere is "up" and which one is "down") of the current star system. "Starboard" is towards the star (Geary even mentions that attempts to replace it with "starward" failed), while "port" is away from the star. When asked what happens when ships are far from any star system, Geary replies that this never happens. Since the only known methods of FTLTravel involve either the use of HyperspaceLanes or a PortalNetwork, ships don't normally go out into interstellar space.
** One thing that no one asks is what happens when multiple ships are already facing directly towards or away from the star, but on vastly different vectors.

* Creator/PeterFHamilton's spaceships (especially in ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'') 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!
** Edenist voidhawks, however, are far superior to Adamist ships in every way -- including FTL travel -- due to the fact that they are made of "bitek" (a biological material). Voidhawks are lenticular in shape rather than spherical. Blackhawks -- bitek starships with Adamist commanders -- on the other hand can be pretty much any shape.
** Hamilton uses many SpaceIsAnOcean tropes, but in a manner that is far more ''2001'' than ''Star Wars''.

* In Creator/MichaelFlynn's ''Literature/SpiralArm'' series, this is played with: the ''terms'' have clearly been lifted from ocean ships, but they mean very different things.

* The ''Starwolf'' series by David Gerrold was written as a SubStory InSpace, because the vast distances involved means all the action is confined to SensorSuspense or the [[CabinFever tensions created among the crew who are confined inside the ship]].
* Creator/ArthurCClarke's short story [[http://www.planetary.org/solarsailcd/clarke.htm The Wind from the Sun]]. This is an interesting case because it manages to evoke the feel of ocean travel in space despite being a fairly realistic and hard work. It is a story about literal SpaceSailing -- using perfectly realistic {{Solar Sail}}s, shown to behave the way one would expect given RealLife physics.
* Generally averted in Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' books and their sequels. When humans start building spacecraft of their own, the ranks they use are Army ranks, and ship commanders are called Commandants. Even the use of the word "ship" for a spacecraft is lampshades by a Chinese peasant woman, who hears a male of the Race refer to the craft in this manner, wonder why he says that about a "plane-that-never-comes-down", since it flies instead of swimming. It's also strange that a race that has never had a wet navy in their history (due to being from a desert world) would call a spacecraft a "ship".

* ''Series/BabylonFive'' did dispense with the atmospheric flight analogies, but retained many of the naval ones. It is even mentioned on-screen in the movie "A Call To Arms" that the command decks of Earth ships are traditionally modeled on a submarine. Probably because submarine warfare is the closest analogue to space combat you are likely to find until it actually exists: the arena is 3D, visual targeting is almost always useless, and a small hole in the ship is a major problem rather than a minor inconvenience. Another strange thing is the classification of ships. It seems that the newer, more powerful ships in [[SpaceNavy EarthForce]] are called destroyers (''Omega'', ''Warlock'', ''Victory''), while the older wartime ships are called heavy cruisers (''Hyperion'') and dreadnoughts (''Nova''). This is despite the fact that destroyers are frequently larger than heavy cruisers or dreadnoughts. For example, the ''Omega'' is, basically, the old ''Nova'' with the addition of a spinning central section and less powerful but longer-ranged weapons.
* The modern ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' avoided many of the [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen traditional]] SpaceNavy trappings, to replace them with the trappings of a modern US Navy aircraft carrier. A case of ShownTheirWork, there are many details lifted straight from modern naval procedure and culture. Your typical viewer likely has no idea why engineering types are called "snipes" for example.

** [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]]: The space ''Titanic'' is built to look just like the original, and even has a ''life preserver'' (as in the flotation device) on the front.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E2TheBeastBelow "The Beast Below"]]: The Doctor realizes there is something wrong because of the lack of engine vibration -- the assumption being that ''of course'' a spaceship would need engines constantly running to move through space. [[spoiler:They don't need the engines because the ship is being moved via a SpaceWhale swimming through space.]]

*** Even if not needed for propulsion there would still be the need for power, lights, artificial gravity, etc.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E3TheCurseOfTheBlackSpot "The Curse of the Black Spot"]]: An Earth pirate is able to successfully fly the TARDIS because it is so analogous to his pirate ship. He can determine what parts of the control panel are the "compass" and "wheel" based entirely on his life experience as a pirate captain.

* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' made frequent use of the nautical metaphor, even though it was somewhat at odds with the style of the show as a SpaceWestern. In particular, Mal ''will not stop'' calling the ship a "boat." "Wagon" wouldn't have had quite the same ring.
** The Alliance cruisers in the series were designed to avoid this. The result is a ship consisting of four large vertical towers, with fighters and other craft launching upside-down off a flight deck at the "bottom" of the ship. It looked more like a mobile city than a ship. The smaller warships that appeared in ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' resembled nautical vessels more, but that's likely because they're meant to operate in atmospheres as well as space.
** 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). This is 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.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' tended to vary in its depiction of space depending on [[RuleOfFunny which was funnier at the moment]]. In TheMovie, 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.
* Inverted in ''Series/SeaQuestDSV'', whose premise was basically "The Ocean is Space".
** The show pretty much ignores fluid dynamics whenever it's convenient and goes with the WaterIsAir idea.
* In general, ''Series/SpaceAboveAndBeyond'' tended to have nautical metaphors for the larger craft and, like ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'', atmospheric flight metaphors for the one-person craft. The analogy seemed to be with an aircraft carrier.
** Specifically, the capital ships in the series -- ''Saratoga'', ''Hornet'', etc. -- are all named after US Navy aircraft carriers, though with ground troops and their transports also aboard, the capital ships seem closer to present day amphibious assault ships. Notably, however, the Space is an Ocean analogy is not extended to the small transport craft, which are referred to by the decidedly land-based term of [[AwesomePersonnelCarrier APC]], rather than as "landing craft" (as they are often used to ferry troops to planetside from space) or simply, "transport."

[[folder:Mythology]]
* The Ancient Egyptians actually did believe that space was an ocean, named Nuun.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Star Trek'']]
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' made as much of the nautical metaphor as it possibly could.
** A maritime tradition that survives in Starfleet is the tradition of [[MarriedAtSea ship's captains performing wedding ceremonies]]. Kirk, Picard, and Janeway all have 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."

*** The fact that Dr. [=McCoy=]'s nickname is Bones is also a reference to the sailing era, being a common period nickname for the ship's surgeon, short for "sawbones."
*** The episode "Balance of Terror" hyperextended the metaphor by presenting a [[CloakingDevice cloaked ship]] as analogous to a submarine. The crew of the Enterprise has to be quiet while the Romulans are hunting them in a situation analogous to sonar.
*** In the episode "The Ultimate Computer," Kirk says, "All I ... ask is a tall ship and a star ... to steer her by." You ... you could feel the wind at your back in those days. The sounds of the sea ... beneath you, and even if you take away the wind and the water ... it's still the same. The ship is yours. You can feel her. And the stars are still there, Bones."

** ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'': The Enterprise beats Khan's ship by maneuvering in ''3'' dimensions. Spock [[LampshadeHanging specifically mentions]] this, saying Khan is used to "old wars" and thus doesn't think in three dimensions, only two.
** ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'': When the Enterprise interior is being picked apart from top to bottom the atmosphere as a whole subtly gives the impression of an actual naval vessel in space. The ship's bell even rings in a few scenes. The space battle comes off as two surface warships attempting to pin down a particularly stealthy submarine, presumably one that never needed to surface for air.

*** In the episode "Allegiance," Picard sings "Heart of Oak," an old British navy song.
*** "Yesterday's Enterprise" shows what life would be like on the ''Enterprise-D'' if she had been designed as a dedicated warship, and the effect is pretty familiar to anyone who has served in a modern navy: crowded, utilitarian, and noisy -- even aping the constant PA announcements in the background. If you listen closely, references to the ship's CIC can even be heard in a scene set in Ten-Forward, which is no longer a bar, but a place for the crew to gather and eat the Starfleet equivalent of B-rations.

** ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': Picard's personal diplomatic craft is called a "yacht."
** According to longtime Star Trek graphic designer Michael Okuda, illegible signage in the various series often referred to emergency escape pods as "lifeboats."

*** "Explorers" involves Captain Sisko [[RecycledINSPACE playing Thor Heyerdahl in a replica of an ancient Bajoran ship powered]] by {{Solar Sail}}s. 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 mechanization ... They ''were'' working from one particular inventor's plans, and needed an exact duplicate to prove a point.
*** In "Playing God", Jadzia Dax straight up says that they "picked up some kind of subspace seaweed" while out in the runabout shuttle.
*** "For the Uniform" plays a modernised version. Due to the ''Defiant's'' computer core having been mostly wiped by a computer virus the ship has to be flown with a larger crew than is normally visible, with orders relayed from the bridge all over the ship and characters giving detailed instructions and echoing commands. The resulting cacophony of overlapping voices rather accurately captures what the CIC of a modern warship sounds like.
** The film ''Film/StarTrekBeyond'' kinda plays with this trope to the max during the climax when the USS Franklin flies straight into the drone swarm fleet. It visually looks like a rogue wave.
** ExtendedUniverse:
*** A ''Star Trek'' novel describes Starfleet regulations as being "copied from old US naval regs." While this book isn't canon, it does suggest that Starfleet was consciously modeled on an oceanic navy.
*** The "NCC" prefix of Starfleet ship registration numbers stands for "naval construction contract."

* ''TabletopGame/{{Alternity}}'': not only warship classes are modelled after RealLife naval ones, them as the Battle Cruiser (heavily armed and sacrificing armor in exchange for speed) being more or less like their sea equivalents, but also artwork of most of them gives them a well-defined top and bottom, up to having a citadel on the former.

* ''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.

* ''TabletopGame/FullThrust'' is a truly great tabletop wargame, with great background fluff, realistic (semi-optional) "vector movement" rules, and a variable unit system -- the game system measurements come with a suggested (very reasonable) scale, but is in the end explicitly left up to the players to decide. In one game, 1 Movement Unit might be a single kilometre, while in another, it might be a whole AU or more. 1 point of Mass might be the suggested 100 tonnes and scale linearly, or it might be 10 and scale logarithmically.
** 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.
* ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'' has the Sons of Ether, techno-mages based around fringe, outdated, and/or pulp science, who have galleon-like Etherships whose sails catch "etheric currents." That Ethernauts tend to stand on the decks of such ships, dressed in nautical steampunk and firing lasers from cannons, is in line with the Etherite mentality. It also [[TakeThat irritates their foes]], as the [[TheRival Void Engineers]] are constrained by a 'no oxygen/waves in space' paradigm. [[note]]The straw that drove the Sons of Ether out of the Technocracy was the latter's decision to exclude Ether from the accepted Paradigm, which, among other things, took the Ocean out of Space.[[/note]]

* ''TabletopGame/Space1889'': Justified. European countries have their regular ocean navies handle the liftwood ships and aether flyers and since liftwood is relatively new (less than twenty years ago) to the Europeans their shipbuilders mostly use nomenclature, technologies and techniques from the regular navy.
* The ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'' setting for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has rather a lot of starships that look like sailing ships. This is because at the tech level of ''Dungeons & Dragons'', major trading centers on planets are likely to be coastal or at least river cities. Many of the spelljammers are designed to be capable of landing on water, so they can use the existing facilities (docks, presence of longshoremen to act as temporary workers to load and unload cargo, large and thriving merchant community). It's also explicitly stated that since the only really essential piece of equipment is the jamming helm, for most cultures it's easiest to take a vessel you've already got lying around and slap a helm in it, and water-based cargo vessels tend to be significantly larger than land-based ones, ''so''...\\\
Combat rules are based on 2D combat. There's no provision for soaring over or diving below another vessel. A valiant effort is made to justify this in the form of the "gravity plane": in ''Spelljammer'', objects in space have... for some reason... a gravity plane, and gravity acts in a direction normal to this plane (from both sides, so it's ''possible'' to design a ship with decks on both the "top" and "bottom", though such a ship can't ever land on either land or water for obvious reasons). What's not explained is how the gravity plane "knows" to pass through the ship parallel to the decks instead of, say, perpendicular to them. There's also not just friction in space, but no concept of inertia whatsoever: no matter how fast you were moving last turn, if you don't use your movement points this turn, you don't move.

* The Empire sourcebook for the old ''TabletopGame/StarWarsD6'' presents, in addition to classical SW ships as the Imperial Star Destroyer and others (an escort carrier, several types of cruiser, etc) based on wet navy ones, an "Star Galleon" -- basically an armed and armored transport, don't think on a sailing vessel. Said ships do not follow RealLife ship classes, with (star) destroyers dwarfing cruisers.
* ''TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'' for ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' both uses and averts this trope. Set at the turn of the 23nd Century (2199-2205), in sci-fi universe that doesn't leave the Solar System, the United Kingdom's space forces are formed by the Royal Navy, while the Chinese are based on the Army Rocket Forces, and the American space force is an extension of the Air Force, who beat the U.S. Navy in a bidding war. So the UK forces use naval metaphors, while the others don't.

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' [[GaidenGame spinoff game]] ''TabletopGame/BattlefleetGothic'' is a great example of this. The game and the ships in it joyfully embrace the [[RuleOfCool coolest aspects]] of naval combat through history, with vast hypertech vessels using Napoleonic broadside-based tactics of lines and crossing the T, ancient Greek-style ramming and boarding actions, early 20th century torpedoes and torpedo boats... Eldar ships even have solar ''sails'', need to be at the right angle to the sun to work most effectively, and sometimes ''tack''.

*** The Horus Heresy supplements by Forge World take this even further, introducing a bewildering array of ship types, in addition to the Standard WWII, with names taken from the Age of Sail, such as barques, arks, carracks, galleons and galleass. How a 16th century combined sail and oar propulsion ship translates to space is best left to the imagination, but apparently it is favored by Rogue Traders and approaches a Battleship in power, being able to clear the orbit of a planet and launch a counter-invasion on its own.

--> '''Reika:''' [[ShapedLikeItself Space is an ocean of space.]]
* ''VideoGame/ConquestFrontierWars'' has a Navy-life stucture with space battle ships and even a space aircraft carrier, other units do look more like airplanes. The SpaceIsAnOcean idea is further emphasized by the [[EnergyBeing Celareon]] ships looking like {{Space Whale}}s.

** The sequel treats space as a SettingUpdate of ocean maps: planets are big round "islands", with space docks and space turrets built on the edge (so no space and water on the same map). Space ships are divided into space fighters, space corvettes, space battleships and space carriers, who can all fire at space targets, but only battleships and fighters can fire at ground buildings, and only fighters can enter the planet to shoot ground and air units (the battleship's Devastating Beam Of Death can shoot ground units but takes a while to recharge).
** The Prophet gets an update as well: his Hurricane (mobile anti-ship spell) is replaced with a MeteorStorm that turns a fixed area of space into death to space ships.

* The ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity'' series of shareware games use most of these aspects. Spaceships are ships, bridges are either at the front or on top, 2-d space, sound, only a few days to the next system, etc. However, with the exception of a few "inertialess" ships there is no friction in space (unless, oddly enough, a ship is disabled), which makes combat turn out like jousting.

** Ship classes like Frigate, Cruiser, Battleship and so on all exist, and space has friction. WordOfGod says the programers cheated the space physics by using fluid dynamics formulas in the engine, and canonically, space in EVE has fluidic properties, which is why the game has missiles that use control surfaces to guide them as well.

* The ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'' space sim games refer to spaceships in nautical terms. The militaries that use these ships are called are called navies, and use navy ship classifications and personnel ranking. Fighters are akin to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII atmospheric fighters -- ''[[OldSchoolDogfight WorldWarII-style dogfights]]'' are actually mentioned ''on the box'' as a primary selling point. ''VideoGame/FreeSpace2'' even has a hidden pirate ship, the ''Volition Bravos'', as an EasterEgg (it can be summoned using a cheat code). ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'''s terminology is an interesting example. It turns out that "destroyers" are battleship/aircraft-carrier hybrids and the largest warships in the game, while "cruisers" are the smallest, cheapest warships. The second game, set 32 years after the first, introduces "corvettes" which are in-between destroyers and cruisers in size, and a single frigate, which was corvette-sized but explicitly atypical and therefore didn't indicate what frigates are ''supposed'' to be by then[[note]]the description puts that specific frigate as a one-of-a-kind pocket destroyer -- the firepower and armor rating of a destroyer, the size of a corvette, and greater speed than either[[/note]]. 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.
* The PC game ''VideoGame/GratuitousSpaceBattles'' 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 [=WW2=] naval battles.
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' both uses and subverts this:
** The UNSC ships are fairly boxy, but still has the bridge on the outer portion with a big window. The Covenant ships however, have their bridges close to the centre of their fairly streamlined designs. The series does, however, avert TwoDSpace; see that entry for details.
** The books hint that the UNSC Navy was consciously modeled after oceanic naval traditions, with some characters even lampshading the foolishness of human bridge placement; ''[[Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol The Cole Protocol]]'' has a raiding Covenant Elite speculate upon seeing one that humans have far more reckless courage than most other races of the galaxy.

* The DS title ''VideoGame/InfiniteSpace'' 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.
* ''VideoGame/KaptainBraweABraweNewWorld'' is, essentially, ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' RecycledINSPACE. According to the intro, humanity managed to make it into space in ''19th'' century. So you have ''wooden'' spaceships with ion engines. Basically, the game takes every early sci-fi trope and runs with it. Planets are treated as no more than islands in ''Monkey Island''. For example, an entire planet can consist of a bankrupt hotel and the immediately surrounding area. [[TheFederation Union]] SpacePolice precinct 13 is a wooden SpaceStation that looks like a giant barrel with a funnel. Naturally, there are SpacePirates, although they later go under new management and become an evil corporation instead.

* The various worlds in ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' can be reached by travelling on the ocean, if Sora and Riku getting a MessageInABottle from another world at the end of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' is any indication.[[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI The first game]] features [[SpaceWhale Monstro flying through space]] along with Captain Hook's ship. It also features Sora, Riku, and Kairi planning on visiting other worlds by taking a raft out to sea, with ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance'' implying that, had their world not been destroyed, they might've succeeded.
* The Bioware RPG ''Franchise/MassEffect'' 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 ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' shows the Normandy maneuvering through a debris field in a manner more suited to a stunt airplane than a ship. It seems that Franchise/MassEffect 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.
* In ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', the [[OlympusMons Legendary Pokemon]] of Space, [[DraconicAbomination Palkia]], is part Water-Type.
* The videogame ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' took this to the extreme end. All of the space ships are literal wooden ships, complete with masts, anchors and the like -- except with rocket engines and forcefields built into them. They also have various interstellar lifeforms that look just like sea creatures.

* The PC game ''VideoGame/StarGeneral'' plays UsefulNotes/WorldWarII [[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE]] for all it's worth, hardly surprising considering that the same developers brought us ''Panzer General'' and its successors. Not only do all the ships correspond almost exactly with their UsefulNotes/WorldWarII namesakes, some of the factions seem to be {{Fantasy Counterpart Culture}}s for various combatants from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, including [[{{Anvilicious}} incredibly obvious]] [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Space Nazis]].
* The ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' series uses this in the title. The space portions are also clearly based on ''Franchise/StarTrek.'' The [[VideoGame/StarOcean1 first game]] even starts with a snippit of spoken dialogue taken directly from ''Star Trek'' -- in English no less!

* In the game ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', [[BigBad Bowser]] actually travels through outer space aboard what appears to be a flying sailing ship (which first appeared in the game ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'').
* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' 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.
* An option in the PC game ''VideoGame/{{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. TwoDSpace still applies, though.
* ''VideoGame/{{Traveller}}'' Also has this heavily for the terran, er, imperial side. Naval style commands were for military ship crews, traders require ship's papers (an amusing bit of fluff has a crew wondering why it's called papers if it's all on computers), Captain and all the attendant ranks as well. Smaller ships would be called boats, and have gigs to pick up crew from larger ships.
* ''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon'', just like the film it is a sequel to, is a literal example of this as space in this game contains: islands, currents, [[{{Space Whale}} whales]], fish, [[{{Space Pirates}} pirates]] and submarines capable of hiding under the 'surface'.
* Virgin Victory, CENTINELS spaceship from ''VideoGame/TheWonderful101'' has sails on her. They don't do anything.

* The trope is referenced in [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2061.html this]] ''WebComic/IrregularWebcomic'' strip, with the [[LampshadeHanging obligatory link to this page]], where the NASA worker assures the (soon to be literally) AscendedFanboy that [[ArtisticLicenseSpace that's not how space works]].
* ''WebComic/{{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 ''WebComic/SecondEmpire'', in which a second-hand [[Series/DoctorWho Dalek]] warship designed for slow bombing runs utterly [[CurbStompBattle curb stomps]] [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome 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.
* The ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance'' takes this trope to extremes, with spaceships that have [[SpaceSailing big honking sails on them]]. While solar sails are in fact a reasonably scientific idea, they probably wouldn't be slung on masts of craft which were basically spacefaring galleons, leaning instead towards thin sheets, many hundreds of kilometers across, designed to [[strike:catch particles of the solar wind]] reflect photons. The characters are not in outer space in those ships, but rather in a kind of backwards universe where normal physics do not apply uniformly. It's referred to as "Timeless Space", and there is not only gravity and an atmosphere but also an ocean beneath them -- but touching that ocean will cost a character all of their time and effectively kill them. They think, at least.

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''Podcast/TheEndlessNight'' is a podcast about SpacePirates, which is chock-full of nautical comparisons -- from borrowing the names of famous sailors for main characters (such as Nemo, Odisseus, and Ishmael) to the titles of the episodes.
* In ''Roleplay/NexusGate'' space is treated very much like an ocean. Why there are even space pirates who patrol the stars!

* Parodied on ''WesternAnimation/BackAtTheBarnyard''. Otis and Pip are in outer space, with no idea of how to pilot the space shuttle they are in. Pip makes a remark about how, "that ship has sailed." Otis acts as if this reference to ships gave him an idea, saying, "Wait a minute? Ship? Sailing?" But then he admits, "No, never mind, I've got nothing."
* ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'':
** One episode focuses on a space cruise on a space ship called the ''Titanic.'' Fry wonders at one point if they hit a space dolphin, while Zapp Brannigan (the captain of the ''Titanic)'' makes as many comparisons between space and the ocean as possible.
-->'''Zapp Brannigan:''' Comets -- the icebergs of the sky!
** There's also an episode where the Planet Express Ship starts {{Space Whale}}ing.

** In-universe, the protesters in "The Birdbot of Ice-Crataz" try to stop a tanker from maneuvering by surrounding it in a [[TwoDSpace horizontal ring]]. Of course, the Captain of the tanker simply drops down a few hundred feet (which would not be practical for an ocean-going vessel, but is trivial for a space-going vessel) and flies off. The protesters (including Leela, who is the Captain of her own ship) shame-facedly admit that they never thought of that.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsResistance'': The Colossus is somewhat of an inversion... a starship refueling station on the surface of a literal ocean, on an ocean planet. [[spoiler:By the end of Season 1, it is no longer on the ocean...]]

* There are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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. Given that even a normal sail is as much a wing as it is a sail, not only SpaceIsAir, but Ocean Is Air ar well.

To some extent, Space Is An Ocean is a JustifiedTrope: not only was space thought to be some kind of fluid until the turn of the 20th century[[note]]The fluid was called "luminiferous aether"; physicists knew they couldn't detect it, but thought that they simply did not have the technical skill to do so at the time. We later discovered that the reason aether couldn't be detected is because it doesn't exist. This wasn't because they were stupid back then and couldn't imagine empty space -- it's because they were sure light waves needed a medium (such as air or water) to propagate through, just as sound waves do. As it turns out, light behaves as both wave and particle, making it possible for light to travel through the vacuum of space like any other matter.[[/note]], but seafarers long ago evolved the organizational techniques necessary to safely operate a self-sufficient vessel in a potentially hostile environment for an extended period of time, and it makes more sense to adopt nautical administrative and logistic features (and the terms for them) instead of inventing everything from scratch.

** This is especially noticeable in his "Juvenile" novels that involved commercial or military space travel such as: ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/CitizenOfTheGalaxy'', ''Literature/FarmerInTheSky'', ''Literature/SpaceCadet'' and ''Literature/StarmanJones''.
* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' novel series technology was set up explicitly so author Creator/DavidWeber could do Literature/HoratioHornblower {{IN SPACE}}, with formations of spacecraft blasting away broadsides at each other and even using "gravitational sails" to navigate hyperspace (hyperspace itself having "currents", "waves" and areas just too damn stormy...err, gravitationally random, to move through safely).

* Creator/PeterFHamilton's spaceships (especially in the ''Literature/NightsDawn'' 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!

** ''Space Pirate Anime/CaptainHarlock'' is steeped in nauticality: the main title song references the "Sea of Space", the eponymous space pirate's ship ''Arcadia'' has a sterncastle, with a Skull and Cross Bones pirate flag hung above it (and [[LampshadeHanging there's actually a device made specifically to move the flag as if there was wind]]). The ship is steered with an old-fashioned wooden steering wheel, and Harlock has, on occasion, sailed her on and below an ocean. Harlock's friend Emeraldas' ship ''Anime/QueenEmeraldas'' is a literal ship, suspended from a zeppelin.

** In ''Manga/GalaxyExpress999'', and ''Anime/TheGalaxyRailways'', though, [[CoolTrain space is a railway.]]

* Spaceships have a [[TheBridge 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.

* A spacecraft can be caught in an [[SwirlyEnergyThingy "ion storm"]] or the like, which will toss it hither and thither and ultimately run it aground on a strange exotic uncharted planet. [[note]]Ion storms ''are'' a real phenomenon, but they don't work like ocean storms; an ion storm is simply an unusually intense burst of solar wind.[[/note]]