WASHINGTON (AP) -- A mythical "Star Wars" spacecraft took the name of a real jet fighter. And the ongoing fiction that now features the imaginary craft has furnished a nickname for a real anti-missile project.
There used to be a real "Starfighter" -- the F-104, sometimes called the "man in a missile," that gave the U.S. Air Force its first fighter with twice the speed of sound in the 1950s. An F-104 is normally on permanent show at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, in a section now temporarily closed for repairs.
The 35-foot chrome-and-yellow "Naboo Royal N-1" Starfighter came nearly half a century later, from the imagination of filmmaker George Lucas, for use in his most recent episode of "Star Wars" called "The Phantom Menace."
The Smithsonian opens an exhibit on Saturday called "Star Wars: the Art of the Starfighter" at its Arts and Industries Building, half a block from Air and Space. It centers on the fantasy craft, built in Britain for the filming in 1997. A movie prop, it was never designed to fly or fight. Like similar imaginary vehicles, its shape was adjusted to illustrate episodes in the story.
One design, an information panel explains, was based on auto hood ornaments of the 1950s.
The show will start a four-year tour of affiliated museums after it closes in Washington June 24. An earlier Smithsonian exhibit -- "Star Wars: the Magic of Myth" -- is already touring and will be on the road through 2003.
It was the original movie that furnished critics with the derisive nickname -- "Star Wars" -- for President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. President Bush hopes to make a reality of a scaled-back version.
The new exhibit is designed both for play and instruction in the art of fantastic film design. Besides interactive games, it includes an account of how film producers handle models, computer animation and other tools to produce special effects. It shows how the "Naboo" model evolved from Darth Vader's personal "TIE fighter" and other fictional space vehicles in "Star Wars" episodes.
