"This is the new ocean, and I believe the United States must sail on it."
"When and if man ever breaches the womb of our solar system and is born in earnest as an interstellar being, only one thing will be certain: It will be exactly like sailing. That, or the old West."
— Michael Swaim, Cracked. com editor, The 8 Most Common Sci-Fi Visions of the Future (And Why They'll Never Happen)
"The space destroyer was on a six-month cruise in the Western Pacific Sector. It was two days out of Subic Spaceport in the Philios system when the ion storm struck. Meanwhile, many of the off duty sailors and officers were experiencing nauspace and lightheadedness, the initial symptoms of space scurvy."
— An exaggeration of this trope from the RPG Codex forums
Zapp Brannigan: Kiff, I am feeling the captain's itch.
Kiff: I'll get the powder sir.
Zapp Brannigan: No, the itch for adventure. Prepare to change course.
Kiff: Sir, this is a leisure cruise. Our path is set by the travel agency.
Zapp Brannigan: Thats for school girls. [scrawls down a new route] Now heres a route with some chest hair.
Kiff: But, that course leads directly through a swarm of comets.
Zapp Brannigan: Yes, comets, the icebergs of the sky. By jackknifing from one to the next at break next speed we might just get some kind of gravity boost or something. It's time to shove a jalapeño up this ship's tailpipe. Divert power from the shields. Full speed ahead.
Kiff: I'll get the powder sir.
Zapp Brannigan: No, the itch for adventure. Prepare to change course.
Kiff: Sir, this is a leisure cruise. Our path is set by the travel agency.
Zapp Brannigan: Thats for school girls. [scrawls down a new route] Now heres a route with some chest hair.
Kiff: But, that course leads directly through a swarm of comets.
Zapp Brannigan: Yes, comets, the icebergs of the sky. By jackknifing from one to the next at break next speed we might just get some kind of gravity boost or something. It's time to shove a jalapeño up this ship's tailpipe. Divert power from the shields. Full speed ahead.
"The surface of the Earth is the shore of the Cosmic Ocean. Recently, we've waded a little way out, and the water seems inviting."
"Space is an ocean of space."
— Reika Kirishima, Castle of Shikigami III
"You can't use the scale of today's aerospace program to assess space forces of the future. Spaceships, when their day comes, will probably be even bigger and carry a larger crew than today's aircraft carriers. Future space warfare will be based on large-tonnage, high-endurance combat platforms, and engagements will resemble naval battles more than air combat, with a battlefield in three dimensions instead of two. So the military's space branch must be based upon the navy."
— General Chang Weisi, The Dark Forest
"I never understood why Spacefleet has to follow naval traditions. The pioneer aviators who were the first to leave the surface of the Earth: Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager, the Wright brothers — those are the ones we should look to for inspiration."
— Captain Janeway, Rocketship Voyager
"We are a people of the sea. Space may not be so different."
— Admiral Raddus, Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith
