wow, there's another hawkwind fanatic on this forum?!?
i even have snarfle beat in terms of hawkwind product. i have every official studio and live release from 1970-1980, and almost every album up until the present. hawkwind are one of the very few bands who have been around since 1970 that rarely put out crap. of course, some are better than others, but they never sold out or altered their sound and vision to appeal to the masses. my favorite studio albums, in rough order:
the hall of the mountain grill (1974)
doremi fasol latido (1972)
warrior on the edge of time (1975)
in search of space (1971)
quark, strangeness, and charm (1977)
levitation (1980)
pxr5 (1979)
hawkwind (1970)
astounding sounds, amazing music (1976)
25 years on (1978) (credited to hawklords)
sonic attack (1981)
as for live albums, space ritual is of course the essential one to get, and equals the first three albums in quality. the 1999 party is a great document of a live 1974 show, and bbc radio 1 live in concert is a killer 1972 performance.
one has to be careful when purchasing hawkwind, as there are over a hundred different releases, some of which have duplicated material, and some of which have extremely poor sound quality. if anything, the musical quality is solid, though i'd advise to explore '80s hawkwind after all of the '70s recordings are exhausted.
inner city unit, nik turner's '80s post-punk/psych band, were pretty damn good, as is most of his solo output. in fact, most of the musicians involved in the hawkwind universe remain fairly true to the initial dark sci-fi acid vision, including simon house and harvey bainbridge.
also, it must be noted that lemmy was an integral part of hawkwind from 1972-1975.
