Mother ship
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A mother ship is a vessel or aircraft that carries a smaller vessel or aircraft that operates independently from it. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research (such as the B-52 carrying the X-15), or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be explored (such as the Atlantis II carrying the Alvin). The mothership may also recover the smaller craft, or may go its own way after releasing it.
The term mother ship dates back to the nineteenth century whaling trade when small, fast ships were used to chase and kill whales. The dead meat from several boats was then brought back to the larger, slower ship for processing and storage until the return to land. This model enabled a far more efficient method of whaling. Though whaling is much lower-scale than in earlier days, the single large storage ship model is still used extensively by fishermen. Such ships are known today as factory ships.
In many languages the word "mother ship" refers to an aircraft carrier.
The mother ship concept was used in moon landings performed in the 1960s. Both the unsuccessful American 1962 Ranger landers and the successful Soviet 1966 Luna landers were unmanned spherical capsules ejected at the last moment from mother ships that had carried them to the Moon and crashed onto its surface. In the manned Apollo program, astronauts in the lunar module separated from the command module in lunar orbit, descended to the lunar surface, and returned to dock in a lunar orbit rendezvous with the command module once more for a ride home to Earth.
[edit] In science fiction and UFOs
The term has achieved prominence in science fiction and in UFO lore, which extend the idea to apply to spaceships serving as the heart of a fleet. The concept of mothership (almost always spelled as a single word) clearly implies that the other ships in the fleet are dependent on the mothership for at least some services. Motherships are essentially the sci-fi equivalent to modern flagships. Typically, a mothership will take up station in an area and remain there for long periods, while smaller ships sortie to interesting destinations. Sometimes a mothership is large enough to operate alone, or is so huge that it contains a fleet in its body.
Motherships entered UFO lore through the UFO sightings of George Adamski, who claimed to sometimes see large cigar shaped Venusian motherships out of which flew smaller sized flying saucers.
Roles played in a fleet by a mothership may include:
- in-flight construction of new, smaller ships
- supply and repair tender
- troop transport
- carrier (of fighters, shuttles, etc.)
- supplementary propulsion (i.e., multi-ship warp field, hyperdrive, etc.)
- weapon of mass destruction
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Examples of motherships include:
- The moon-sized alien starship in Independence Day launched an invasion of Earth by deploying a fleet of surface-adapted destroyers.
- The gigantic 3 mile wide mothership in the 1983 mini-series V co-ordinated an invasion of Earth
- The Battlestar of Battlestar Galactica (and its 2003 remake), which is a mothership to colonial fighter craft, and the Cylon Basestar which is a starside, mobile fortress in the Cylon fleet.[citation needed]
- The SDF-1 Macross super dimension fortress in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross could house and support an entire city inside its hull. It also carries several squadrons of variable fighters. The massive Zentradi mothership in the same series supported a battle fleet of 4.8 million capital ships, each equivalent in size to the SDF-1.[citation needed]
- The immense colony ship in the game Homeworld supported a constantly growing fleet of fighters and capital ships and carried thousands of people in suspended animation.
- The Scrin Mothership from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars fires the Catalyst Cannon which creates a powerful chain reaction destroying everything caught in the blast.
- In Earth: Final Conflict, aliens use the living Taelon Mothership as a center of operations in their episodic attempts to subjugate or otherwise conquer the human race.
- The Great Fox in Star Fox 64 and subsequent games serves as a mothership for the Star Fox team, housing spare fighters, tanks, and weapons.
- Each race in the MMORPG Eve Online has a mothership class ship. This is the second largest ship class currently (2007) in the game after titans. Each mothership can launch and control a large number of drones and fighters and is so massive that it cannot dock in stations.
[edit] In Dating and Social Networking
Mothership is a leading gay dating and social networking website for men in the UK and Ireland. Mothership was launched in August 2007, is a registered community and UK trademark and can be found at www.mother-ship.com [1].
