T-Minus Ten Minutes

What's with the self-destruct button? We've seen it in Alien and Spaceballs, and the wide variety of films in between. It's fairly common knowledge by now that every spaceship has a mechanism that will make the craft explode in some magical CGI fireball, saving the day at the last possible moment. There is always an unusually friendly computer-woman counting down the seconds to imminent doom. Thanks, lady.

But would any reasonable design/construction company purposely build this function into a spaceship of such gargantuan size? They're presumably spending at least several billion spacebucks on it. Why allow it to so easily be destroyed? Especially a large battle-spaceship that's begging to be infiltrated by terrorist/rebel forces? Why take that chance? Why not just train your fucking staff not to get over-run by aliens with blood made of acid? That's got to be easier.

Don't get me started on the Death Star.

Also, do real spaceships have self-destruct buttons? I have to hope that despite their many incompetencies, the bureaocracy of the U.S. government would never build such a mechanism into the space shuttle. (Besides, anyone who's seen Contact knows astronauts get cyanide capsules anyway.) Even the Russians and Chinese can't be dumb enough to invest so much time, effort and money in something that can be exploded with the push of a big red button.

But think for a moment of the infamous Polish navy. Surely you wouldn't be surprised if the same people who brought us the screen-door-submarine also put a self-destruct button on a spaceship. Is this what we should learn from science fiction? Is Poland destined to become Earth's technological superpower?

If you're looking for me, I'll be in my basement hoarding solar-powered flashlights.