I'm far enough along in my writing process of Sublight Frontier that I'm starting to have to slap labels on things, and have characters start spouting out terms. I have figured out that because this world discovered rocketry before flight, they would favor naval terms for things over aeronautical terms.

But when it comes to creating a space military force, what does on actually call it? Space Navy? No NAVY steps from the same root word as NAUTICAL. Spavy? Eh, not correct and my wife says it sounds like a venereal disease.

Star Trek get around it by simply calling their organization Star Fleet. Which, unfortunately doesn't make much sense in my world because people are still confined to the Solar System. Also the term Astronaut probably would never be used. Cosmonaut is more general, and there isn't the "Anything but what the Russians call it" mentality.

But then memory lane tugged in the strings of Macross. All of their ships were labeled with UN SPACY.

While I was thinking about it, my main character wouldn't be the Navigator for the vessel. She would be a Cosmogator. Or, being that this world might have taken a different approach to women's liberation Cosmogatrix.

In my world, the German Empire got to the moon first. Most rocket terms are probably going to be in German. "Ferstanden" instead of Roger. "notefall" instead of "Mayday". "Panne" instead of "pan".

I picked the "best of" for the Enlisted. I mainly found myself preferring the Army and Marines terms. The navy way of making everyone a Sailor or a Petty officer X class is terrible.

For the Navy I ended up adopting the British naval ranks. There's still to much "Rear Vice and Uber" in the Admiral category. But the soup of Generals isn't much better. Plus I like the sound of "Commodore" far better than "Rear admiral - lower half"

Of course the question inevitably arises: would a SPACY have officers and enlisted? Invariably yes. They are a natural progression to space of imperial navies of the last 19th century. Class divisions would remain, somewhat. Though, probably like in the United States who ends up an Officer and who ends up Enlisted comes down to education.

But when we bring up education we run into a conundrum. While the education system we employ in our world is largely geared to the trades (Thus Bachelors, Master, Doctor), the education system in Sublight is geared toward magic. Thus people will be ranked according to their level of Magical training.

Practitioners below the level of "Journeyman" can really only perform Tegic with the assistance of an instructor. At a Journeyman level, you can utilize Tegic for occupational or other practical purposes. A Master level Tegic user can teach Tegic to others. Like in the trades, a "Master" has to demonstrate their work to the satisfaction of his/her peers. This is normally a Masterpiece. Wizards operate on the level of our Ph.Ds. They push the state of the art. Ranking Tegic users above the Wizard level is silly, because you have to evaluate them on individual skills. And most of those judgements will be downright subjective.

Tegic ranks are universal, because all Tegic users must be board certified by the International Union of Tegic Practitioners, who operate the Lethian Flying University.

When it comes to matters of command, the Martial ranking system of officers and enlisted comes into play. But when it comes to matters of Magic, a Private who is a Journeyman outranks an Admiral who is a Novice.

I think I will have to set up a situation where Sub Lieutenant Degan who is a Master of Cosmogation has to pull rank over a Commodore. The Commodore (with at best a basic understanding of physics) orders a vessel perform an impossible (or highly disruptive to life aboard) manuever. Degan, has to dutifully decline the order, and issue a report with her justification as to why she (and the expert system on the ship) find the orders to be preposterous. Which, of course, will set off a fire storm until someone higher up informs the Commodore that if he HAD gotten his way, and if the ship HAD been damaged not only would Degan be held personally responsible, he would probably be dropped to the rank of Shoe Shine Boy to an Ensign before being Cashiered out of the service.

Perhaps finish the drama with him sending Degan a nice bottle of scotch as a "Thank you for not letting me shoot myself in the foot" gift.

I posed this question on Facebook, and I got some pretty great replies

Robert L

Stephen M

Adam W

Mike M (former planetarium coworker)

Clif F (fellow tcl programmer)

Ron F (fellow tcl programmer, nuclear scientist)