10 Origins Of Star Wars Props You Won't Believe
5. The Millennium Falcon Set Consisted Of Airplane Scraps & Devices To Heat Food
When it comes to iconic spaceship interiors just about every sci-fi fan knows and loves, the show begins and ends with the Millennium Falcon. The cockpit design is so iconic, half the audience wept with nostalgic joy upon seeing it for the first time in years while watching The Force Awakens.
Still, how do you go about designing a futuristic spaceship cockpit in the 1970s when real-world vessels at the time had little more than hundreds of switches and lights? Roger Christain was the man behind the design, and in his words, "The Millennium Falcon was difficult."
Most of what you see in the Falcon cockpit came from pieces of jet engines, and he had to train prop men to break them down, scrap them, and line them along the walls "into different categories." This required a ton of work and even more parts from all types of jet engines.
His use of jet engine parts stemmed from a limited time and budget available to dress the sets, but fortunately, junkyards were filled with the stuff, and it was cheap! In addition to the engine parts, equipment used to heat food on airplanes also made it into the cockpit.