Calling all Starship Troopers players!

[BuShips]

I'll be cross-posting a clone of this notice (and plea!) on the other forum of note (you'll know very soon which one!).

Please note that this is not a political topic, as it is just a plea for the "name" of a ship.

Now I don't know if letters from around the World from non-U.S. citizens to the U.S. Secretary of the Navy will have any impact, but at least a bunch here are U.S. visitors of Mongoose Publishing's Forums and are also its customers.

Let me call this "Starship Troopers meets Victory at Sea"

This July 7, 2007 will mark the 100th birthday of Robert A. Heinlein, author of the Hugo award-winning novel Starship Troopers and a Veteran & supporter of the U.S. Navy. Heinlein, Naval Academy class of 1929 and author of books that inspired his readers to become scientists and engineers, deserves to have his native Country honor him with the naming of one of the new DDG-1000 class of 21st-Century destroyers. Sleek in design and displaying an outline from out of science fiction itself, this new naval ship deserves to have a proper sendoff by carrying the name of a long-time Naval supporter and visionary.

For those that may be interested, here is a website with details of how to request that this become a significant part of future history-

http://www.heinleincentennial.com/ussheinlein.html

Happy Birthday and "Shines the name" of Robert A. Heinlein!

info on the ship class:

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/dd21/

 

[Turtle]

Damn, that destroyer looks like it could levitate out of the water and go into orbit. If that isn't worthy of the name Heinlein, what is.

 

[BuShips]

Damn, that destroyer looks like it could levitate out of the water and go into orbit. If that isn't worthy of the name Heinlein, what is.

Yeah, DM doesn't like it, but I just think he's jealous, lol. :wink:
Still, it is related to his line of work. Hmm... :shock:

 

[Hiromoon]

Heck yeah!

Course, that's if funding doesn't get cut...

...again....

 

[Goldwyrm]

Like I said somewhere else..

I'm not against it, but they should be patient and wait to use the name for a military spacecraft.

 

[BuShips]

Like I said somewhere else..

I'm not against it, but they should be patient and wait to use the name for a military spacecraft.

Hi Goldwyrm, That "cute" quote from Arthur C. Clark about the term 'ship' and how it might relate to history is a play on the fact that this is a chance to name a ship for him, for the first time. There is never going to be another 'first time' for this event and besides, if Man's history is long enough they will forget that it was a 'wet, gravity-bound ship' :wink: .

 

[Goldwyrm]

True. We do have the Enterprise and the Yamato as precedents. :wink:

 

[BuShips]

Sometimes I out-do myself :roll:. I really began to wonder why I felt that I needed to respond to the comment below (read on another hobby forum, noless), but I justified it to myself as a "mental exercise". In fact, I don't think I'm fooling myself really, as I really did need to break out and don my "thinking cap" to come up with a few answers to the challenge offered. :wink:

"As this topic in no way affects miniatures wargaming, I wonder why it was ever allowed to be introduced."

Because maybe without this author's vision, a big chunk of board and miniatures wargaming would not have happened the way that it did. Just for several examples that come to mind, did you know that the excellent movie Aliens had its Colonial Marines shaped after Heinlein's novel? The cast members were given copies of the book and were told to read it for character guidance and "feel". If not for that movie being made, I honestly do not see any way that the classic miniatures game of Space Hulk would have ever been released. The parallels are undeniable imho and shaped the game designer's vision of a "Bughunt" on a spaceship. That's a fairly short "degree of separation" I would say. Heinlein inspired many of his readers to become scientists and engineers, and this no doubt has caused changes in countless ways to the world that I might even say could have become the catalyst that allowed the existence of the computer that I am sitting in front of. Cell phones, computers, and such are a direct result of space science, nanotechnology and other areas that Heinlein's readers have helped develop. As far as degrees of separation, my wallet has suffered from more than a few amounts of currency separating from it due to Mr. Heinlein's influence, as I have a large collection of SST miniatures. As one last connection to wargaming, I might venture a guess that J. Michael Straczynski might have read a few of R.A. Heinlein's works, which may have helped influence him in writing the scripts for the Babylon 5 series. Because that series found more than a few fans over at Mongoose Publishing, a license was picked up to publish a miniatures game. That set of miniatures game rules adapted so well to historic naval tabletop gaming that Mongoose then published a new miniatures game rulebook that was based upon the previous science fiction game. Strangely enough, I plan to eventually make use of my vast collection of warship miniatures, several of which are models of ships that Mr. Heinlein served upon (CV-2 USS Lexington, and DD-147 USS Roper). As for myself, I say the topic is valid and I'm sending the letter. Ahh, I see that my particular bag of popcorn is ready, one that was cooked by the way in a device made from war-surplus radar units. I wonder if the inventor of that device had read one of Heinlein's works? It was published in 1948 (post-WW2), and was called "Space Cadet". Here is a line of text from that novel- "Theoretically every ration taken aboard a Patrol vessel is pre-cooked and ready for eating as soon as it is taken out of freeze and subjected to the number of seconds, plainly marked on the package, of high-frequency heating required."

 

[roughneck GIR]

Looks really cool! Indeed very science fictiony! With heinlein's sst novel my beloved favorite movie(s) wouldn't exist, and rich ragsdale and jerry gold smith wouldn't have won any awards, and james cameron wouldn't have made any interesting movies, etc etc. Infact yes I did know the cast of AL|ENS had to read the sst novel since two years ago

 

[Mr Evil]

well if it uses windows or Vista, the crew will constantly be battling with bugs

 

[roughneck GIR]

well if it uses windows or Vista, the crew will constantly be battling with bugs

Oi! I've never had a bug once! In my 5 years of owning anything windows related, though I'll join you in making fun of vista :lol:

 

[Rob_A]

I've had loads of bugs.
Ever run a virus check? :lol: