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This is my favorite scene in the movie, and the first warp ship is my favorite vehicle, so I'm just being picky here. The launch vehicle shown here is a Titan II ICBM, first flown in 1988. Not withstanding the fact that by the time the story starts the missile would be ancient, it also sports some impressive flight performance beyond its time. The real Titan II uses two stages to carrying a nuclear payload into low Earth orbit. For heavier payloads like satellites it requires two more strap-on boosters (Titan IV variety). In First Contact, it carries a three-person crew, in an incredibly spacious cockpit, and tons of warp equipment behind the cockpit. It is clearly only a garden variety Titan II from a silo, but flies into orbit (indeed even reaching escape velocity) using only the first stage. During the staging maneuver you can see that the 2nd stage motor only fires a short burst, they are already in space ! No launch vehicle today goes single-stage-to-orbit, without strap-on boosters (except the MD Delta Clipper, which is unfortunately cancelled during development). |