https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulae_in_fiction#Veil_Nebula wrote:
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The Veil Nebula is one component of the large but relatively faint spherical residue of a supernova that exploded some 5 to 8 thousand years ago. Discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, the remnant appears to human observers as a braid of thread-like strands. The standard interpretation is that the shock waves defining its surface are so attenuated that the shell is visible only when viewed edge-on, giving it the appearance of a collection of filaments.
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Dark Star (1974), film written by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, and directed by Carpenter. The scout ship
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*] and its bored, eccentric crew wander the universe, armed with sentient "thermostellar" bombs:
In the mid-22nd century, mankind has begun colonizing the far reaches of the universe. Armed with artificially intelligent "Thermostellar Triggering Devices," the scout ship
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*] and its crew have been alone in space for 20 years on a mission to destroy "unstable planets" which might threaten future colonization of other planets.
The ship is in a state of deterioration and there are frequent system malfunctions (for example, an irreparable radiation leak, their cargo of intelligent talking bombs lowering from their bomb bay without a command to do so, and an explosion destroying their sleeping quarters), and only the voice of the ship's computer for company. The
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*]′s commanding officer,
Commander Powell, was killed during hyperdrive as a result of an electrical short-circuit behind his rear seat panel, but remains aboard the ship in a state of cryogenic suspension. The ship's remaining crew consists of its new commanding officer, Lieutenant
Doolittle (helmsman, and originally second-in-command), Sergeant
Pinback (bombardier), Corporal
Boiler (navigator), and
Talby (target specialist). As the tedium of their tasks over 20 years has driven them "around the bend", they have created distractions for themselves:
Doolittle, formerly a surfer from Malibu, California, has constructed a musical bottle organ;
Talby spends his time in the ship's observation dome, content to watch the universe go by;
Boiler obsessively trims his moustache, smokes cigars, and shoots targets with the ship's emergency laser rifle in a corridor.
Pinback plays practical jokes on the crew members, maintains a video diary, and has adopted
a ship's mascot in the form of a mischievous "beach ball"-like alien who refuses to stay in a storage room, forcing
Pinback to chase it around the ship and eventually kill it with a gun.
Pinback claims he is actually liquid fuel specialist
Bill Frug, who inadvertently took the "real" Sergeant
Pinback's place after he committed suicide by jumping into a fuel tank.
En route to their next target (the Veil Nebula), the
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*] is hit by a bolt of electromagnetic energy during a storm, resulting in yet another on-board malfunction, with "Thermostellar Bomb #20" receiving an order to deploy. The ship's computer convinces Bomb #20 that the order was in error, and persuades the bomb to disarm itself and return to the bomb bay.
Talby notes the malfunction, and investigates the fault. He discovers a damaged communications laser in the emergency airlock while the crew is engaging in their next bombing run. While
Talby attempts to repair it, the laser malfunctions, blinding
Talby and knocking him unconscious, causing extensive damage to the main computer, and damaging the bomb release mechanism on Bomb #20.
Due to the damage to the ship's computer, the crew members cannot activate the release mechanism and attempt to abort the drop. After two prior accidental deployments, Bomb #20 refuses to disarm or abort the countdown sequence. The computer activates dampers to confine the blast to a diameter of one mile, but that is all it can do at the moment. As
Pinback and
Boiler try to talk the bomb out of blowing up underneath the ship,
Doolittle revives
Commander Powell, who advises him to teach the bomb the rudiments of phenomenology. After donning a space suit and exiting the ship to approach the bomb directly,
Doolittle engages in a philosophical conversation with Bomb #20 until it decides to abort its countdown and retreat to the bomb bay for further contemplation.
When attempting to assist
Doolittle in re-entering the ship,
Pinback inadvertently jettisons
Talby out of the airlock. As
Doolittle tries to rescue the now-conscious
Talby,
Pinback addresses the bomb over the intercom in another attempt to disarm it.
Doolittle has mistakenly taught the bomb Cartesian doubt and, as a result, Bomb #20 determines that it can only trust itself and not external input. Convinced that only it exists, and that its sole purpose in life is to explode, Bomb #20 detonates. The
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*] is destroyed, and
Pinback and
Boiler are killed instantly. Commander Powell is flung into space encased in ice, and
Talby and
Doolittle are blown in opposite trajectories.
Talby drifts into the Phoenix Asteroids (a cluster he has long had a fascination with), destined to circumnavigate the universe for eternity. As
Doolittle loses contact with
Talby, he sees that he is falling toward the unstable planet. Realizing he will burn up upon entering its atmosphere, he drifts into debris from the
Dark Star[ship Asterisk*], finds a surfboard-shaped hunk of debris, and "surfs" down into the atmosphere, dying as a falling star.>>