FLIGHT OF THE CHROME SEED

 I watched Flight of the Navigator with my Grandson recently. A fun family film from the 80's in the vein of ET with the boy pilot bonding with his alien spaceship.

The spaceship itself is like a big chrome beech nut. Its an interesting shape, which can change too.

I love the first shape shown, its so organic-looking like a nut or a a seed. It reminded me a bit of the insect hive spacecraft buried in Quatermess and the Pit, a sort of ovoid seed too.

I imagine there are a few more seed-like spaceships in film, TV and literature. Last week I think someone also mentioned a similarity with old ice cream cases from ice cream vans. I wonder if they meant oysters?

Anyway, because I couldn't find any toys connected to Flight of the Navigator at all [which I thought odd] I tried to make a small and quick Navigator ship for Junior myself. 

I used tin foil rolled up into a ball and then shaped and smoothed with a spoon. I seem to recall doing this as a kid and after a lot of smoothing getting a fine flat finish in the foil. On You Tube there are videos of foil balls being given a perfect mirror-finish.

My tinkering sort of worked and Junior recognised me efforts when he said 'That's the ship from the film!"

Alas, I didn't photograph my tin foil craft but I'm sure you've had a bash at foiling yourself.

Here's a class rocket someone's done on the net. There's even a tin foil astronauts club.

Photographs of your tin foil spaceships welcomed!

And finally, as I was surfing for silver seeds and the like, this Alessi lemon squeezer popped up. Instant War of the Worlds tripod or what! Anyone ever used one in a sci-fi setting?