Information I'd love to know

cthia wrote:An Ensign on her Middy cruise may not have enough experience to know that. And, as part of my other concerns, what about pod launches made too closely to lamed ships uncontrollably exiting the wall of battle. Is it possible to launch pods right up a ships wedge? Into a ship's sidewall?

New middies might indeed not have enough experience. But it is critical that it be possible to control escape pod launches at the pod. The people up on the bridge aren't going to know when a pod is full and ready to launch. Besides, the people on the bridge would be heading to pods, too. There may be interlocks controlled from the bridge to prevent escape pods from being launched during normal operations. But there has to be controls at the pod for actual launching, and probably overrides so that a pod can be launched even if the bridge has been destroyed.

As for launching into sidewalls and wedge, no, that should not be possible. Pod launchers would be designed to throw escape pods away from the sidewalls and wedge, and ships cannot turn or roll fast enough to accidentally hit an escape pod. Escape pods also should have automated maneuvering jets to move them away from the ship, wedge, and debris.

Okay! Enough is ENUFF!

I have an obsession with word and idiom etymology, as if you can't tell. lol

"Operation Raging Justice," "Operation Buttercup." Etc. etc. etc., yatta yatta yatta. I always try to imagine, of which anal orifice were these names pulled. And I can usually satisfy myself. Call it a personal exercise.

But this...

"Bank Shot" was the codename of a 50-kiloton nuclear charge hidden beneath the Octagon.

WTF? That one can only be figured out by Hannibal Lecter himself.

cthia wrote:Okay! Enough is ENUFF!

I have an obsession with word and idiom etymology, as if you can't tell. lol

"Operation Raging Justice," "Operation Buttercup." Etc. etc. etc., yatta yatta yatta. I always try to imagine, of which anal orifice were these names pulled. And I can usually satisfy myself. Call it a personal exercise.

But this...

"Bank Shot" was the codename of a 50-kiloton nuclear charge hidden beneath the Octagon.

WTF? That one can only be figured out by Hannibal Lecter himself.

In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:Okay! Enough is ENUFF!

I have an obsession with word and idiom etymology, as if you can't tell. lol

"Operation Raging Justice," "Operation Buttercup." Etc. etc. etc., yatta yatta yatta. I always try to imagine, of which anal orifice were these names pulled. And I can usually satisfy myself. Call it a personal exercise.

But this...
"Bank Shot" was the codename of a 50-kiloton nuclear charge hidden beneath the Octagon.

WTF? That one can only be figured out by Hannibal Lecter himself.

In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

Yeah. Manticore has a good record for genuinely meaningless code names for operations; the SLN and various Havenite organizations, not good at all. It's mentioned at some point that the RMN's code names are randomly generated - exactly as planners should prefer and readers puzzle over.

cthia wrote:Okay! Enough is ENUFF!

I have an obsession with word and idiom etymology, as if you can't tell. lol

"Operation Raging Justice," "Operation Buttercup." Etc. etc. etc., yatta yatta yatta. I always try to imagine, of which anal orifice were these names pulled. And I can usually satisfy myself. Call it a personal exercise.

But this...
"Bank Shot" was the codename of a 50-kiloton nuclear charge hidden beneath the Octagon.

WTF? That one can only be figured out by Hannibal Lecter himself.

SWM wrote:In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

JeffEngel wrote:
Yeah. Manticore has a good record for genuinely meaningless code names for operations; the SLN and various Havenite organizations, not good at all. It's mentioned at some point that the RMN's code names are randomly generated - exactly as planners should prefer and readers puzzle over.

(hope I sorted out the quotes correctly)

On this side of the pond a "Bank Shot" is the one that wins all the marbles, so I suppose OSJ assumed that no matter what was happening, the nuke under the Octagon would win the game for him, hence the code name.

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:Okay! Enough is ENUFF!
I have an obsession with word and idiom etymology, as if you can't tell. lol

"Operation Raging Justice," "Operation Buttercup." Etc. etc. etc., yatta yatta yatta. I always try to imagine, of which anal orifice were these names pulled. And I can usually satisfy myself. Call it a personal exercise.

But this...
"Bank Shot" was the codename of a 50-kiloton nuclear charge hidden beneath the Octagon.

WTF? That one can only be figured out by Hannibal Lecter himself.

In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

JeffEngel wrote:Yeah. Manticore has a good record for genuinely meaningless code names for operations; the SLN and various Havenite organizations, not good at all. It's mentioned at some point that the RMN's code names are randomly generated - exactly as planners should prefer and readers puzzle over.

****** *


Fair enuff and makes sense. But, as I said, I am quite good at figuring them out anyways. For instance "Operation Oyster Bay" was born when...

Leonard Detweiler stood on the Spider's great flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power when he exclaimed with outstretched arms held out to space "The galaxy is my oyster!"

cthia wrote: Fair enuff and makes sense. But, as I said, I am quite good at figuring them out anyways. For instance "Operation Oyster Bay" was born when...

Leonard Detweiler stood on the Spider's great flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power when he exclaimed with outstretched arms held out to space "The galaxy is my oyster!"

That one is too obvious: Oyster Bay <-- Pearl Harbor.

Winston Churchill wrote:Operations in which large numbers of men may lose their lives ought not to be described by code words which imply a boastful or overconfident sentiment,… or, conversely, which are calculated to invest the plan with an air of despondency…They ought not to be names of a frivolous character…They should not be ordinary words often used in other connections…Names of living people – Ministers and Commanders – should be avoided…

2. After all, the world is wide, and intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called “Bunnyhug” or “Ballyhoo.”

I know for a fact the Nz police ones are randomly generated to prevent what happened a couple of years ago: a code name too closely related to the mission, word got out, and the criminals twigged a day early and hid the evidence.

Of course now the missions have names like blue primrose, but at least it leaks no info.....

SWM wrote:In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:In principle, code names should have no relationship to the nature of the project or product that they name. You are quite deliberately not supposed to figure out how things get named. Because if you can figure it out, it's not a good code name.

JeffEngel wrote:Yeah. Manticore has a good record for genuinely meaningless code names for operations; the SLN and various Havenite organizations, not good at all. It's mentioned at some point that the RMN's code names are randomly generated - exactly as planners should prefer and readers puzzle over.

****** *


Fair enuff and makes sense. But, as I said, I am quite good at figuring them out anyways. For instance "Operation Oyster Bay" was born when...

Actually, Oyster Bay is a joke which the readers are supposed to figure out. Oyster => Pearl, Bay => Harbor. Operation Oyster Bay is an example of a truly terrible code name, from a security perspective. There's no way the Alignment would really give it a name like that; it has that name solely as a joke between the author and the readers.

Most of the code names David uses aren't like that.

SWM wrote:
Most of the code names David uses aren't like that.

He does it quite a bit. Firebrand anyone?