Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
digital nomad - upgraded from murder hobo
This is a good one. It's a close relation to US nuclear boats of cone-ers and nukes, that is non-nuclear trained personnel and nuclear trained personnel. Often prefaced by an obscenity.Front ender: Starship crew that are not engineering types, bridge crew.
rock apes - marines stationed on a planetoid
Do you perhaps have a specific issue [and page]?Please also see "Epithets for the Fifth Frontier War" from the Classic Traveller era JTAS
JTAS 9, p 27Do you perhaps have a specific issue [and page]?
In keeping with the theme, a veteran unit of drop troops should be known as a Meteor Swarm . . .Fireballs - Imperial Marine drop troops who have made at least one successful insertion via drop. This is 'in-group' slang; it is accepted from other (non-drop) Imperial Marines, tolerated from other Imperial armed forces personnel, and is borderline 'fighting words' from civilians.
I've never taken Uncle Sam's shilling, but from talking to friends who have, I think this actually has some currency, with a slightly modified usage - if the commanding officer of a ship has a commission (i.e., rank Ensign or above), he is addressed as 'Captain' - but on smaller craft, where command might be vested in a senior NCO (CPO or above), that commander is addressed as 'skipper'.skipper - starship master and commander
Uncle Sam's Navy here. For us, any commander in charge of a vessel of any size is a skipper, as long as that vessel's not assigned to a larger one (such as the ship's boat on a destroyer), though it's a very informal term of address. It's used almost exclusively as a third person reference when on duty. It's super informal. If you're out drinking with the CO, or in some other unofficial situation, 'skipper' might be OK to use to his face. (I understand some captains are less formal than any of mine were, but I wasn't close enough to them at any point to try.) Gilligan famously addresses the captain of the Minnow that way almost exclusively.I've never taken Uncle Sam's shilling, but from talking to friends who have, I think this actually has some currency, with a slightly modified usage - if the commanding officer of a ship has a commission (i.e., rank Ensign or above), he is addressed as 'Captain' - but on smaller craft, where command might be vested in a senior NCO (CPO or above), that commander is addressed as 'skipper'.
In the civilian world, the titles 'Captain' and 'Skipper' might be interchangeable, though IMTU I'd likely say that if the commander is mandated to wear a military-esque uniform - for example, on a passenger liner, or most corporate multi-ship fleets - 'Captain' would be more likely than 'Skipper'.