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I want to write a science fiction short story that's basically the Battle of the Komandorski Islands IN SPACE and I want to get the jargon right.
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Port = left Starboard = right Fore = front Aft = rear Ships are "piloted", or "skippered" never driven.
Ranks for officers are (in ascending order) Ensign (brass single bar), Lieutenant Junior Grade (silver single bar), Lieutenant (silver double bars), Lieutenant Commander (brass oak leaf), Commander (silver oak leaf), Captain (silver eagle), Rear Admiral Lower Half (silver star), Rear Admiral Upper Half (two silver stars), Vice Admiral (three silver stars), Admiral (4 silver stars) In a time of war, there can be one Fleet Admiral (5 silver stars).
Regardless of actual rank, the commanding officer of a ship at sea is called "the Captain" and officers with the rank captain who are not commanding officer are often referred to by their job title, such as "XO" for Executive Officer.
I was never in the Navy...just for the record.
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Blayne Bradley
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What I was interested in is the somewhat more important stuff like how orders are given and recieved, the proper way to respond, how the chain of command works on a naval vessel.
For example in Fiction Land: What I usually see is the Captain give an order and the XO repeats it, the response of the people on the bridge seems to be "aye aye captain" whether this is correct I don't know.
Also details like are they in full dress on the bridge or is there an operational uniform?
Etc etc not stuff I can get from a quick glance at wikipedia, stuff that if I was to compose the scene a navy guy could read and go "Okay thats wrong, he would never say that, she wouldn't act like that, no [insert rank here] would EVER be caught dead doing/saying that..." etc.
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Read a lot of good naval fiction. I suggest the Horatio Hornblower novels, the Aubrey-Maturin series (best known for the novel Master and Commander), and (to show you how to do it with science fiction) the Seafort Saga and maybe the Honor Harrington series.
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Blayne Bradley
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Why do I keep forgetting Honor Harrington... I have a couple of the books but I never got around to reading them as they're not in the correct order
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Curse a lot, your guys will have to either love or hate the skipper, superior officers are always Sir or Ma'am (never sir or ma'am an enlisted if there are any enlisted in space), when referring to people in the third person use their job and not their names. Skipper, XO, Chief, MM2, that kind of thing.
"Senior says you're a dumbass." "Chief looks like a fish." "Master Chief hates you." "MM2 is going to kill you." "Petty Officer Johnson wants to be keelhauled." "Ensign Smith is a douche." "The Warrant wants to see you in five." "The XO is coming."
That kind of stuff. Also, this is useful if you do go with the traditional structure.
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I also recommend The Caine Mutiny. Very interesting exploration of some different command styles and how the ship's crew responds.
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Being in the Air Force I'm always disappointed in how the space future is (almost) always based strongly on the Navy. Where's the love?
Posts: 258 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Blayne Bradley
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Also any books or experience with joint crews? Like suddenly mixing the crews of two different ships or preferably two different navies on the same boat?
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Good point. A spaceship and a space force are somewhat analogous to sea ships and navies, but not completely so..... I'd like to see someone construct a fictional organization which makes more sense. The navy/ space fleet thing gets a little old....
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I would be absolutely astonished if any of the current traditions of the Navy make it into space-based militaries, to be honest. Not least because almost all fighting, piloting and repairs will be conducted by drones, leaving behind nothing but a few technicians and some high-level officers. So many naval traditions evolved from the need to maintain strict discipline in the tight and deprived quarters of a seagoing vessel that I don't know if they'd survive in....Well, I take that back. Perhaps the only environment more in need of discipline than a seagoing vessel in the 18th century would be a spacegoing vessel in the 23rd. You'd have a tiny skeleton crew, but that crew would be regimented beyond belief.
What would be interesting is if there were some equivalent to the Air Force. I can't imagine that human pilots would have any role whatsoever in space combat, but perhaps the AF would have evolved into RC jockeys by that point. In that scenario, the tension between robot drivers and the ships that'd carry them into battle might well be quite acute.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Also any books or experience with joint crews? Like suddenly mixing the crews of two different ships or preferably two different navies on the same boat?
In the American Navy there is at any one time and place a SOPA -- "Senior Officer Present Afloat."
SOPA's commands will outrank any individual commanders' commands.
American Naval Officers have lineal numbers. Officers of identical rank know who outranks whom by who has he lower lineal number.
So if you're a Captain onboard a cruiser which get's sunk and I'm a Commander serving as Captain onboard a destroyer and I rescue you, you could be SOPA and find it appropriate to give me orders.
If we were both Commanders and in that situation, we would default to lineal numbers.
Of course anyone presuming to override the tactical or day-to-day commands of the captain onboard a ship better have a damned good reason -- one which could stand up in a board of inquiry.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Flying Fish: @happyman:
Good point. A spaceship and a space force are somewhat analogous to sea ships and navies, but not completely so..... I'd like to see someone construct a fictional organization which makes more sense. The navy/ space fleet thing gets a little old....
I always sorta felt that something that was analogous to NASA X many years later as a military organization as a separate branch would make the most sense.
But then comes the issue or ranks, Commander, General or Admiral? And Admiral just sorta wins from rule of cool.
In someways though the navy as a bit of fridge brilliance makes more sense because of how steeped in tradition most navies are. Anything and everything that worked 200 years ago remains minimally changed today. So it makes sense from this perspective for a Space!Navy to keep calling things in space "drydock", "port", "stern" etc.
Mostly to keep things relate able to the audience, they know "most" of these terms and what they relate to, the only difference is "in space" which is now "an ocean".
What goes wrooooooong is when we try to get all hard sciencey and these things conflict. For example what good is port and stern and other directions when they're arbitrary and the enemy's gate is down*?
What I think I'll do is have the Human space forces be more like a militerized evolution of NASA while the aliens more traditional space-navy.
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And on the day the ship passes the orbit of Saturn we will beat all the polliwogs with firehoses, shave their heads, and ask Neptune to declare them shellbacks.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I would be absolutely astonished if any of the current traditions of the Navy make it into space-based militaries, to be honest. Not least because almost all fighting, piloting and repairs will be conducted by drones, leaving behind nothing but a few technicians and some high-level officers. So many naval traditions evolved from the need to maintain strict discipline in the tight and deprived quarters of a seagoing vessel that I don't know if they'd survive in....Well, I take that back. Perhaps the only environment more in need of discipline than a seagoing vessel in the 18th century would be a spacegoing vessel in the 23rd. You'd have a tiny skeleton crew, but that crew would be regimented beyond belief.
What would be interesting is if there were some equivalent to the Air Force. I can't imagine that human pilots would have any role whatsoever in space combat, but perhaps the AF would have evolved into RC jockeys by that point. In that scenario, the tension between robot drivers and the ships that'd carry them into battle might well be quite acute.
This entirely depends, 100% entirely on how space combat works in the given setting.
Although what I favor is the "One Big Lie" (FTL travel) and the rest conforms to project rho give or take a few handwaves "okay they figured out how to produce this incredibly rare and durable material in large amounts..." (like carbon nanotubes).
But I largely believe that even when 98% hard on the Moh's scale that all one has to do is state there is a prevalence of ECM and other jamming techniques to render most drone systems useless, potentially even allowing manned fighters to be viable.
To a point of course, I have no idea how manned fighters or drones would even be remotely useful outside of orbital combat. If they're fast enough to catch up the distance between fleet a and fleet b then they are also fast enough to be kinetic weapons in their own right and why couldn't normal missiles do the same job?
"Robinson's First Law of space combat is that something hitting at 3 km/sec (kips) delivers kinetic energy broadly equal to its mass in TNT.
Robinson's Second Law of space combat is that for every kilogram of handwavium you remove from a setting, you add about 10 cubic meters of impossible to maintain plumbing.
Most people instinctively know Burnside's Zeroth Law of space combat: Science fiction fans relate more to human beings than to silicon chips. That is, while it might make more logical sense to have an interplanetary battle waged between groups of computer controlled spacecraft, it would be infinitely more boring than a battle between groups of human crewed spacecraft.
A one man fighter spacecraft would be a more effective weapon if you removed the fighter pilot, their life support, and their acceleration limits, and then replaced them with a computer. You would basically be converting the fighter spacecraft into a roving missile bus, and removing the logical justification for the existence of fighter spacecraft altogether. But fighter spacecraft have to exist, according to the Zeroth Law (well, actually not. Fighters don't have to exist if there are humans on the carrier/missile boat and/or the target ship).
Yes, there are exceptions to Burnside's Zeroth Law in science fiction, but they are few, far in between, and the result of exceptionally skilled authors. These are the "exceptions that Test the rule" (the original aphorism is from the Latin, and the word "probat" in this context should be translated as "test", not "prove"). Examples include "Longshot" by Vernor Vinge, and "Sun Up" by A. A. Jackson and Howard Waldrop."
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quote:For example what good is port and stern and other directions...
Actually pretty important. Remember, "port" means "to the ship's left, facing fore." This is a direction that will always remain relevant, no matter where you are or how you're facing. "East" is a meaningless direction in space, but "starboard" is not. Yaw, pitch, and roll will always be important measurements in travel, and arguably even more important in space.
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Blayne Bradley
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Hmm, I think it depends a bit on ship design but I'll keep it in mind.
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In the C-130 we call it "towards 1" or "left" for the pilot's left and "towards 4" or "right" for the pilot's right. This can get confusing for the load master who is facing aft (turned around looking out the back of the aircraft) and has to think about pulling the "left" handle with his right hand. But when we move in reverse (a cool C-130 thing to do) we give directions with "towards 1" or "towards 4" to indicate direction. This comes from the numbering of the engines. The outboard left is #1, inboard left is #2, inboard right is #3, outboard right is #4. Just for another perspective.
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Blayne Bradley
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Btw anyone have any particular favorite older ships that they'ld like to see "reborn" as spaceships? (Not the Enterprise) I'm thinking the first human starship should be the USS Iowa.
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And also, we talk about using the Navy because they are really steeped in tradition, whereas the Air Force has only been around for a quarter of that time (using the 200 year Navy refrence. I suppose, technically, the Navy (i.e. ships) has been around a LOT longer than that). But, in the future the Air Force will have been around for all intents and purposes just as long as the Navy. What's 150 years when we're counting in thousands? The Navy is relevant, I believe, mostly because of what Blayne said that the audience relates to it. They recognize the terms.
Posts: 258 | Registered: Jul 2006
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I think another reason people use the Navy as a model for this sort of thing is that their traditions were/are so strict and brutal in a way that the Air Force has never had to be. Not only was the AF largely created in a post-class society, it was always a society of rogues and classless people in the first place; the Navy was a place for young noblemen to make names for themselves if they didn't have the temper for the Church -- and, as noted, the extreme importance of discipline aboardship created a very stringent set of rules and traditions. The Air Force simply didn't need that sort of structure, and never developed it.
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quote:Being in the Air Force I'm always disappointed in how the space future is (almost) always based strongly on the Navy. Where's the love?
I can think of a couple reasons that space future is based on the Navy and not the Air Force.
A) The Navy has a HUGE tradition, predating the founding our country by centuries, where as the Air Force was a branch of the Army until 1947. I mean heck, the Air Service (which became the Army Air Corps, which became the Air Force) come into existence in 1918.
B) The mission of the Navy is more similar to space fleets then that of the Air Force. On a Navy ship, you spend months out in the middle of the ocean, similar to serving aboard a space ship, you are away from your family, and have a whole community living aboard ship with you. In the Air Force (from my layman's knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong) missions last hours in the air, and you are pretty much sitting in a confined space, not living for months at time.
C) Huge space ships are very similar to Navy ships, and not Air Force planes, that is, huge, capable of living on/in for extended periods, with gigantic stores of supplies and support personnel.
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Fixed structures on a ship are given numbers if you have more than one. If they run fore-to-aft, foremost will be one, next will be two, etc.
If they run side to side, the ones closest to centerline are lower numbers, the outermost are higher numbers, and even numbers are given to things on the port side, and odd numbers are given to things on the starboard side.
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I like Space Navy stories. What makes the story good, IMO, is all the run-ins with tradition, chain of command, and discipline the (usually) maverick POV has. Set that against the huge backdrop of space and all that yummy technology and it's a hard combination to beat in sci-fi.
I would have to agree that the Navy is the best model for a starship and a fleet. Specifically, a submarine. That kind of absolute power and discipline would be key to a military ship in space.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I wonder what the future would look like if the Army hadn't absolutely hated air travel thereby causing the Air Force to become its own branch. If the Air Force had stayed a part of the Army and borrowed all of the traditions of the Army then you would have an Air Force (Army Air Corps?) with as strong a tradition as the Navy. Also, what would the future look like if, instead of the Navy being in charge of their own fleet defense, the Air Force (Army Air Corps?) loaned them planes for fleet defense? Just wondering.
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I guess they could make three rights.
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Blayne Bradley
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I'm thinking 108 named characters, very much a Legend of Galactic Heroes / Turtledove esque story, multiple pov jumping.
The "One Big Lie" I'm thinking of something a cross between Mass Effect and Warp Drive.
Basically it can "warp" along at interstellar speeds when sufficiently away from a gravity well (ie a planet) where sufficient depends upon the processing power of the onboard computers.
Once its near a gravity well it shuts off so no planet crackers.
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quote:Originally posted by happymann: Being in the Air Force I'm always disappointed in how the space future is (almost) always based strongly on the Navy. Where's the love?
One word: Stargate.
(Ok, technically that's an alternate present, but nonetheless.)
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Blayne Bradley
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What I'm writing is also sorta an alternate present (near near future anyways).
Thus having other people also come in and grouse about the lack of airforce visibility in scifi/space opera is of interest to me. As before posting this I had only a vague notion of how Earth would enter into space, now I'm more certain.
(For the USA anyways, I'm definitely thinking Airforce/NASA, other militeries might do different things.)
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quote:Originally posted by Flying Fish: And on the day the ship passes the orbit of Saturn we will beat all the polliwogs with firehoses, shave their heads, and ask Neptune to declare them shellbacks.
My mother-in-law's father was in the Navy (late 1930s and forward a bit). I've got some of his papers, including a poster from when he crossed the equator, complete with mermaids and invoking Neptune. It's awesome. Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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That's not a poster, that's an official military certificate. Shellback certificates are treasured! The Navy also places facsimiles of such certificates in member's service record personnel jackets.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Apr 2009
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Dammit rivka. I was scrolling down going, "no one's mentioned Stargate yet!"
The Air Force makes considerably more sense when imagining the development of the Space Program. You don't first need people who can command ships, you need people who can fly planes.
You only need people who can command boat-like ships a zillion years in the future (or, if you're talking Stargate, five or so).
All this is making me want to watch Stargate .
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