By Forrest Wickman | Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2012, at 11:29 AM ET

Prometheus is a terrible name for a spaceship.Image of the USCSS Prometheus © 20th Century Fox 2012. All rights reserved.

Heavily foreshadowed spoilers ahead.

Dear People of the Future,

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve just received a state-of-the-art spacecraft, and you’re probably about to take it on an extremely dangerous mission. Your journey may even concern the safety and continued survival of the human race.

But don’t worry! I’m betting your new ride is pretty sick. It’s probably got a warp drive and maybe a solar sail and lots of other technology I couldn’t even begin to understand.

At this point, you’re probably wondering: What should I name my spacecraft?

If it’s 2057, and you’re flying to the Sun because the human race needs you to reignite it, and your previous ship, called the Icarus I, has mysteriously disappeared, I plead with you: Do not name your new ship the Icarus II. Try a new name this time! I know Icarus had some pretty nice wings, but they didn’t last, remember?* It’s a pretty good bet your ship won’t either.

In fact, you idiots may want to name a whole bunch of ships “the Icarus.” Maybe you stopped actually reading the Greek myths, and just pore over the cast of characters for spaceship names. But don’t you at least watch movies? Planet of the Apes is a pretty good one—you might even call it a sci-fi classic. But the Icarus from that movie ended up crashing on a hostile planet ruled by apes. Worse, the planet ended up being Earth!

(Speaking of which, if you’re about to breed a race of super-intelligent apes, please don’t name the first one Caesar.)

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