Bigger Than Big

Once More Into The Titular Theme

Today we will be looking at things named as or for 'Titan', in line with our recent look at 'Matador' and 'Atlas', because Conrad likes nothing more than to follow a train of thought until it hits the buffers, to mangle a metaphor.  Art!

     The original Titan hails from Greek mythology, being the son of Gaia and Uranus, blessed with immense size and strength.  His mother appears to have been rather a mischief-maker, as she spurred on Titan and his equally enormous mates to usurp the throne, make the unkindest cut of all to Uranus and elect Kronus as King Of Everything.  Art!

Titan being all titanic

     Well, you know the saying, 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown' and the son of Kronus, Zeus, usurped dad in turn.  Art!

     Meet Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.  Aptly named, because it's bigger than Mercury, which is a planet in it's own right.  Titan has been literally obscured from astronomical research as it has a dense atmosphere, which made direct observation of the surface very difficult until recently.  If you had Googled for 'Titan' up to the Cassini mission, you'd have gotten a blank and featureless image such as this.  Art!

     Another very interesting feature of Titan is that is has surface 'water', or at least lakes of liquid, which intriguing landmarks might contain life, even if only at the microbial level.  If they can metabolise methane, which is what the atmosphere consists of.  Like the Jovian moon Europa, it is suspected that Titan has a sub-surface ocean of water heavily salted with ammonia compounds, allowing it to stay liquid even in minus temperatures.  Art!

Yessssss!

     Come on, you had to be expecting this.  What you see here is the Titan I ICBM, the first iteration of a long and diligent series of such missiles.  It was the South Canadian's first mult-stage ICBM and came about as a result of the rapidly-diminishing size of nuclear warheads, meaning you could realistically put a bomb on a missile that wasn't the size of the Empire State Building.  It came into service in 1959, so again within the remit of "On Thermonuclear War", even if it was officially retired by the time the Cuban Missile Crisis began.  If you want performance specifics, then it had a range of 6,250 miles, with a CEP of one mile, and a big 3.75 Mt warhead.  Art!

     They were a fuss to fuel as they used Liquid Oxygen, a volatile and potentially dangerous component, and a highly-refined petrol derivative, which needed special storage conditions.  Conrad suspects the gantry above was used for just such fuelling.  Yes yes yes, we have usually featured the Titan II in BOOJUM! articles, but if we carry on with this item there won't be any room left for the rest of the blog.

Art!

     This is Titan, sole survivor of the marine city of Hydroma.  He rules, god-like, over the Aquaphibians, who revere him for killing off a giant squid that had terrorised and killed them for years.  He's remarkably clever and conscientious, the only drawback being that he directs both qualities into warfare against us land-dwellers, whom he blames for the destruction of Hydroma.  O and he also resents the World Aqua Sea Patrol for freeing (and employing) his chief slave, Marina.  Art!

It melts his pan that she got her own comic strip and he didn't

     Of course - obviously! - the name most often associated with 'Titan' is a certain unlucky ship, which, if Art will put down his bowl of coal -

     You can immediately tell that this is a BRITISH film because of the profound understatement inherent in the title.  Yes indeedy, the "Titanic" sinking beneath your feet with insufficient lifeboat-ery to save enough people, whom are doomed to die, is certainly a night to remember.  I believe there was a South Canadian remake of ANTR but I'm not fond of remakes so it will remain sight unseen.

     I think that's enough first-order Titan items.  We may come back to this.

Another Titanic Task

<ahem>  yes, Your Humble Scribe has decided to update his Book Mountain list, which means trawling through hundreds of books and cross-referencing them with the Book Barn List.  Art!

     A sample page, one of 14.   I decided to pick on the loosely-stacked victims of my bookcase collapse first, as they're quite accessible and also at ground level.  Art!

     The trick is NOT to think "O I'll just have a quick look at that" because that will inevitably eat up the weekend and it's nightfall before you know it.  Art!

    Case in point.  This is from Forrest Ackerman's book on sci-fi, about which I thought "O I'll just have a quick look at that", and was arrested by this photo.  Which film is it from? I pondered.

     I now know, but I'm not going to tell you.  Art!

     Sorting this lot out is going to be daunting, to say the least.

Pier Runners Part The Second

Yes, yet more about the entitled people who think "O they'll never leave without us, we're so important - HEY COME BACK!!"  Art!

     They are, at least, making an effort.  One reason a cruise ship is not going to wait around are the dock fees that they have to pay.  Shock horror ports and harbours charge money for ships berthing there! Otherwise they wouldn't be long for this commercial world.  These charges cover a lot of items you don't think once, let alone twice, about: security services, parking, customs and immigration, pilotage, tug boats and general upkeep of the port itself.

     These are not cheap.  Here are some numbers for you for the 'Harmony of the Seas'.  At Port Miami: $80,000; at Port Everglades: $60,000; at Port Canaveral: $15,000.  If a ship overstays it's 'slot' there will be extra charges applied.  So, the pier runners might cost a ship thousands of dollars in 'late fees'.

     Just one more reason they won't wait!  Art!

45 minutes late = no ship

     Madame, if all you possess on the quayside is a bikini and towel, then you are in big - even titanic - trouble.

"City In The Sky"

Poking around a deserted city is never a cheery experience, all the more so when it's falling to bits after decades of neglect.

     They followed the now empty railbed for trams, heading north.  After five minutes they still hadn’t come across any rails or intact power cables, which left Ace puzzled and Alex completely clueless.  To the Doctor it spoke volumes.  So too did what appeared at first sight to be a car-park away to their left.

     Sighing, Ace followed the Doctor when he diverted away to the car park.  Ranks of vehicles, easily in the thousands, had been left there, all with their bonnets sprung and propped open.  None of them had wheels, instead residing on bricks or blocks of wood.

     Ace snapped her fingers.

     ‘Professor!  I just realised what’s missing!’

     The Doctor turned from looking at rusted wrecks to his ingenue.

     ‘There’s no cars left abandoned.  Look at the roads.  Not a single car left by the side, or abandoned.’

     Beaming with pride, the Doctor inclined his head at Alex.

     ‘Apt pupil.  I taught her everything she knows.  Well done Ace!  I’d missed that.  I think that allows me to complete the picture.’

     ‘Recycling!’ realised Alex, recognising a concept bedded into the psyche of everyone aboard the arcologies.

     ‘Quite so,’ drawled the Timelord, producing a pocket telescope and peering at the buildings of the city centre.  As he suspected, window panes were missing from the lower storeys, up to about the tenth floor in every building.  There were other gaps above that level where panes had become loose or unseated, unplanned losses thanks to erosion.

Welcome To 71, Bloaty Gas Tout

In celebration, the ruble fell even further against the dollar on the international market.  Art!

     This is what makes the Puffy Petrolem Pimp's blood turn into super-heated vapour, well beyond merely boiling.  You see, the exchange rate is established by international trade and cannot be either manipulated or hidden by him.

     Konstantin, or 'Big K' as we call him, satirically noted a typical Ruffian response over the ages to any bad news: "Who is guilty and what do we do next?"

     It looks like Elvira Nabuillina may be the goaty-scape target, poor dear.

Finally -

Time for lunch!