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Spacer Superstitions and other Quaint Customs

A series of checks must be done every time a ship makes a double jump with a deep space stop over.
Things that must be done would be;
Transfer fuel from temporary tanks to the regular fuel tanks.
Check the jump drive.
Do a vacuum suited spacewalk to check the external components.
An armed guard is needed to accompany the person doing the outside checks against void monsters.
The navigator must do a position check, then calculates the second jump.
All crew members that have never done a deep space stopover must do a space walk circling around the hull followed by the Kraken ceremony. Where the new void jumpers swear in that they “Saw the Deep Space Kraken.”
All passengers gather in the passenger lounge with an external view for the second jump where they toast to the success of the trip.
Lights throughout the ship are dimmed, lights in the lounge are completely turned off for the second jump.
All crew members report to the pilot they are dark, ready to jump.
Pilot engages the jump drive to the final destination.
 
At the risk of thread necromancy,

Three from MTU (mostly TL12-13 pocket empires):

First Jump: The vast majority of space travel is intrasystem, even navies are mostly system defence forces rather than the vast multistellar fleet that makes up the 3I. Originating in the Providence Navy (and spreading through free traders and Providence’s imperial ambitions) the First Jump ceremony is celebrated for every spacer who’s first (non-frozen) jump is occurring. As the ship prepares to jump these spacers are taken to the ship’s commissioning plate to ask the ship to protect them in the coming jump. They then toast the ship with spirit alcohol (traditionally rum). The spacers then progress to the engine room where they beseech the engine not to fail, they then toast the engine. The spacers are then led to just outside the bridge where they beseech the ship’s officers not to jump them to their deaths, they then toast the astrogator, the pilot, the executive officer and the captain (even if they are the same person). The Captain then presents each of the spacers with a Jump Coin and they are dismissed to the mess. Usually various competitions and games are held as the ship enters jump, though this changes from ship to ship and with the number of fresh jumpers.

Ships also have a first jump ceremony in which the ship’s captain in full dress uniform performs the ceremony in reverse. Crew who are part of a ship’s first jump are all issued Jump Coins identifying the ship. It is considered lucky to have someone who has never jumped before flick the activation switch for a ship’s first jump.

Not Saying the Q-Word: (This is adopted from British police tradition and is less a superstition as a verifiable causal link). It is widely held within the uniformed services of humanity that anyone who says quiet especially in description of an event, patrol, shift or mission curses all those who hear it. The curse can be life threatening (an ambush by enemies) or nothing more than an annoyance (all the grav plates in the mess fault at the same time) but the ‘quiet’ shift will suddenly, and inevitably become ‘interesting’

The Last Meal: Dating from the days of the Terran Hegemony, colonists going into frozen passage would be given a large, good quality meal just before their departure. The high lethality of early Terran cryofreezing combined with the often involuntary nature of selecting colonists led to this being equated in the minds of many to the last meals of those awaiting execution. A superstition has since arisen that specifies that anyone traveling frozen should make sure to eat as little, and as austerely as possible to avoid eating their last meal. This superstition is particularly strong in the Greater Stellar Alliance where there is a higher percentage of Terran founded worlds.
 
chipla said:
The Last Meal: Dating from the days of the Terran Hegemony, colonists going into frozen passage would be given a large, good quality meal just before their departure. The high lethality of early Terran cryofreezing combined with the often involuntary nature of selecting colonists led to this being equated in the minds of many to the last meals of those awaiting execution. A superstition has since arisen that specifies that anyone traveling frozen should make sure to eat as little, and as austerely as possible to avoid eating their last meal. This superstition is particularly strong in the Greater Stellar Alliance where there is a higher percentage of Terran founded worlds.
Click to expand...

Wow...that's just...horrible.

Who did they manage to convince to shove in to these freezer coffins voluntarily? And what were they escaping from?
 
whartung said:
Wow...that's just...horrible.

Who did they manage to convince to shove in to these freezer coffins voluntarily? And what were they escaping from?
Click to expand...

Sometimes anything is better than where you are. People can be desperate for a number of things.

But that is an...interesting...tradition. One of those things that people may not recall the real reason, and when they do find out, there is a bit of culture shock.
 
whartung said:
Wow...that's just...horrible.

Who did they manage to convince to shove in to these freezer coffins voluntarily? And what were they escaping from?
Click to expand...

It was involuntary. Those who actually wanted to emigrate tended to take barracked or middle passages a few months cramped in a ship is a small price to pay to avoid dying in stasis.

Colonisation in the two centuries of the Terran Hegemony was mostly focused on relieving population pressure on Earth and the Core (and keeping the various Oligarchs of those worlds in power of course). One of the policies adopted was forcible relocation (mostly to Phase Two and Three colonies) and most planets in the Core including Earth introduced ‘relocation lotteries’. These lotteries were a poor idea from the offset for obvious reasons but the error was compounded when political dissidents and petty criminals found themselves ‘winning’ the lottery with more and more regularity.

The Hegemony was smart enough to realise that keeping several thousand involuntary colonists awake through their journey was asking for trouble so they froze them. The Hegemony later collapsed in a series of civil wars and the Long Night happened from which the various pocket empires of MTU are starting to recover.
 
There's voluntary and involuntary.

Voluntary would be a determination that the chance is worth taking.

Involuntary would be likely another entity making the determination it's in their interest to relocate the passengers.
 
SCE to AUX: Somewhere in the engine room, or on or near the bridge engineering console, is the Galanglic phrase, "Try SCE to AUX." It may be scrawled in the Far Future-equivalent of Sharpie, printed on a small sign and hung from a switch or handle, micro-routered or laser-etched into a panel or hull plate itself, but it's always close to where the chief engineer spends most of her working time.

The origins of the phrase itself are lost to antiquity, but it's said to bring good fortune to engineers trying to troubleshoot an urgent problem. In some spacer cultures, the phrase is said following a control failure or a lightning strike on the ship; in others, it's touched with fingertips and the words, "Get it back," whispered before troubleshooting the board.
 
Actually it's a switch with SCE and AUX installed on all craft. It does not do anything, but tradition is to switch from SCE to AUX when entering jump, and back SCE when you exit.
 
HIGH FEAST

Sometime during jump week there is a traditional meal served out of the High Passage gourmet supplies for the Middle Passage passengers, who are invited to partake and enter High Passage restricted areas if the ship is large enough for that distinction.

High Passage passengers typically either help prepare/serve the meal, or tip the Steward for rendering this service (Cr20-120 each). Entertainment is also typically provided



SI Staterooms

IMTU approximately half of the staterooms are SI (special interest) equipped. 1 Dton of the personal space will be set aside and equipped with tools and furniture to facilitate that room's theme.

Pet maintenance/quarters, plant worktable, hobby bench, workout equipment, higher end entertainment systems, VR game 'room', musical instrument(s), advanced computers, specialized environmental equipment, medical needs support, minikitchen, clothes maker- these and other SIs are only limited by imagination and space.

These rooms can increase comfort/luxury ratings, if they suit potential interests of the planet/race purchasing tickets.

First come/first served for who gets these rooms, and the High Passage passenger can bump a Middle Passage passenger out of one.


On some ships, the tradition of High Feast also includes a visit of other passengers to view/use the SI space, if the High Passage passenger wishes to share.
 
whartung said:
Actually it's a switch with SCE and AUX installed on all craft. It does not do anything, but tradition is to switch from SCE to AUX when entering jump, and back SCE when you exit.
Click to expand...
Are you familiar with the origin of SCE to AUX? I don't see how it connects to j-space translation - what am I missing?
 
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Black Vulmea said:
Are you familiar with the origin of SCE to AUX? I don't see how it connects to j-space translation - what am I missing?
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm quite familiar with it.

Being an ancient, passed down, useless at a practical level superstition, why wouldn't it apply to j-space translation?

Heck, maybe I'll stick one on my toaster oven so when the toast comes out too light I can say "switch SCE to AUX and hit the 30s button".
 
whartung said:
Yes, I'm quite familiar with it.

Being an ancient, passed down, useless at a practical level superstition, why wouldn't it apply to j-space translation?

Heck, maybe I'll stick one on my toaster oven so when the toast comes out too light I can say "switch SCE to AUX and hit the 30s button".
Click to expand...

Essentially, "Sensor Control Equipment to Aux Power" is jump dimming.
(I'm not certain SCE is Sensor Control Equipment, but it was the sensor relay system that switched to low-power mode when "SCE to Aux" was flipped)
 
whartung said:
Heck, maybe I'll stick one on my toaster oven so when the toast comes out too light I can say "switch SCE to AUX and hit the 30s button".
Click to expand...

In a similar light, back in the day, when the lady in our office would complain about the computer and reports taking too long, we mounted an ad hoc crank to the side of her terminal that she could use to "make it go faster".

She also used that when folks who were looking for the reports would come in asking where they were.

And weirdly related similar story. I once had a laptop. And there were certain processes it would run, and you'd get one of those progress bars puttering across the screen.

If you moved the mouse ball around, it would, legitimately, go faster. I don't know if it was in some somnambulant half sleep mode "person isn't here, so who cares how long it takes" power saving thing or what.
 
whartung said:
Being an ancient, passed down, useless at a practical level superstition, why wouldn't it apply to j-space translation?
Click to expand...
You're asking me to prove a negative? That's not how this works, friend.

aramis said:
Essentially, "Sensor Control Equipment to Aux Power" is jump dimming.
Click to expand...
I think jump dimming is overused to death, myself - to which I am as guilty as the next guy - and 'try SCE to AUX' was about troubleshooting a mission-critical failure, so I like the spirit of it carrying forward as a sort of engineer's invocation when the biological waste effluence hits the life support atmosphere circulator.

aramis said:
(I'm not certain SCE is Sensor Control Equipment, but it was the sensor relay system that switched to low-power mode when "SCE to Aux" was flipped)
Click to expand...
SCE is 'signal conditioning equipment.'
 
The point of the story was that the participants were familiar enough with the equipment and system that they had the solution when the problem appeared.
 
Condottiere said:
The point of the story was that the participants were familiar enough with the equipment and system that they had the solution when the problem appeared.
Click to expand...

Except that that's actually not the way it happened. One guy recognized an obscure failure state and the cure for it from a sim, and the capsule chatter notes that it took them several minutes and a very amusing mis-read... which, had CapCom used the phonetic properly, would have caused finding the switch to be a bit easier. (The crew thought CapCom said "FCE" rather than "SCE"... then even after, asked "What the heck is that?" on open comms.) One man remembering the fix that then takes 3+ minutes to find the switch for is definitely not indicative of "the participants [...] had the solution when the problem appeared." The guy who remembered it didn't even remember it until he was being pushed for an abort...
 
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