You'd Probably Be Quite Annoyed
"The drunken old letch -" which may or may not be the same at "The letchy old drunk" - " - is being deliberately obfuscatory."
You may have a point. After all, in sci-fi since the Thirties*, we have been showered with many, many versions of 'starships', which, as the term implies, are intended for interstellar travel. Art!
The Starry-Trekker multi-decker
You're looking at the 'Enterprise', possibly the most iconic post-Sixties starship design there is. This baby has been to the Galactic rim and back. Given that she was whizzing around deep space for five years, I bet her mileage warranty has long expired. Judging by her crew's exploits, getting a posting aboard her is merely a case of putting in an application form and being accepted in nothing flat, as long as you agree to sign on as Security. Art!
Average life expectancy = 12 minutes once the cameras start rolling, with only Sco
ANYWAY let us move onto another starship. Art!
This bad boy is the Battlestar 'Galactica', which is ugly, brutish and functional, being the Caprican equivalent of an aircraft-carrier in space. Rather grungier and less well-lit than the Ol' Enty, it's a trier.
Going backwards in time to the present day, there is another Starship, which rather clogged my Google search results, it being the one developed by SpaceX, or should that be SpaceTwitter? There's a connection to Elong Tusk, I believe, as he throws money at it and hopes it works. Art!
Sorry no puny humans for scale
Despite it's name, this spaceship is intended for the entirely more mundane task of zipping about the Solar System, to the Moon and Mars in all probability. Nerds and geeks gush about how advanced and modern it is, which they are allowed to do (at least until I take over), but to Conrad it has a distinctly retro feel to it, for have I not got many collected volumes of "Dan Dare"? Art!
See what I mean? Of course - obviously! - when I want an illustration to prove my point there aren't any online and it would take a fair bit of contorting to reach the Collected Volumes. Take my word for it.
Now we get to the meat of the matter, and that 'Starship' of the definite article, which was not intended for interstellar travel, nor even leaving the Earth's atmosphere. Art!
This was a Boeing 720, which went into service in 1960 and spent 13 years as a commercial passenger liner. Then, the South Canadian pop star Bobby Sherman took advice from his accountants and purchased it. Not only that, he spent $200,000 converting it with a bar, swivel-seats, an organ, tables, a looooong couch, a chill room and a bedroom with shower. Art!
Yes, that is Elton Hercules John.
Bobby's sharp-witted accountants realised that there was a definite market for a luxury plane with an interior that looked as little like a plane as possible, for touring musicians. Rather than have to travel between South Canadian cities on coaches, which could add days of travel between gigs, the artistes could use the plane as a flying hotel, crossing distances in mere hours that would have taken days on the road. So, it simplified logistics considerably. Plus it was cool as all get out to have your own plane, even if it was leased. Art!
Yup, Bob Dylan
The Starship had a short career as a flying showbiz venue, being retired in 1977 thanks to wear and tear in the engines, which would have been uneconomical to replace. By then, mind, it had played host to: The Allman Brothers Band; The Rolling Stones; Bob Dylan; Alice Cooper; Deep Purple; Led Zeppelin (twice); The Band; Frank Sinatra; The Moody Blues; Sonny & Cher and Olivia Newton John. I know, I know, those last two not really very street-cred. Nobody has given values for how much it cost to charter TS, but take note of Led Zep leasing it for the rest of their 1973 tour - not the whole thing - which came to $30,000. One might well assume $50,000 for the whole hog. Art!
In glorious Seventies sepiacolour
Excuse me, I've just come across an insanely detailed Led Zep fan page that goes into the story of The Starship in excruciating/unbelievable/awesome <delete where applicable> detail. We will probably come back to this, it still has legs.
So there you go, three different varieties of starship.
"Slidex"
Or, in the spirit of the above, "SlideX". This was a term I'd not heard of before perusing "Supplying The British Army In The Second World War" by Janet MacDonald.
It was a form of encoding for short-term use, where 'short-term' means no more than a few hours, so it didn't have to be especially robust or proof against decoding. Art!
The idea was to use a pair of cursors, one horizontal and one vertical, which would be used to align on one particular square on a large board containing lots and lots of common terms in each branch of the services. Art!
Looking at this, if you wanted to transmit 'Essential' that would be at the intersection of 'FD' and 'BK' so those would be the codes you used. Not a terribly secure means of passing on information, true, except by the time your opposition had intercepted, decoded and sent the results back to the front lines, they'd already have been flattened by a troop of Churchill tanks.
Erk!
As the characters in the comics of my childhood used to say. Not Dan Dare, he was too well-mannered to resort to an expostulation like that. Digby, perhaps.
ANYWAY I would like to post a Snip I took from Twitter (Elong Tusk winces), without telling you anything about it. Art!
I perused the blurb before so much as glancing at the picture, and wondered if it was a critique or comment by Ruffian mil-bloggers on their army's inability to properly cater to those injured who had suffered amputation and -
Then I looked at the picture.
No, it's not the dark and dismal topic I imagined. By contrast it's a light and fluffy computer game, which means I will never touch the Dog Buns! thing as computer games are the thieves of time. You can't fault me for not paying attention to their handle, people on Twitter use a lot of peculiar nomenclature.
O Serendipity!
If you look back to our Intro, you'll see an incredibly young Elton John, on his 1974 tour of South Canada. Hard to credit the bloke is still going 50 years later. I also note that he's never been precious about himself and he mercilessly sends himself up in "Kingsman", so much so I didn't believe it was him. Art!
Typically muted and downbeat
Why a reprise here? Because my roving eye caught a sidebar item on the Beeb's News website, which is quite poignant. Art!
Yes! Retire, Elton! Spend the mountains of cash you've earned over a 50-odd year career!
I do have "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", actually/
Finally -
Conrad consistently misreads the lettering on passing vans and trucks that declares their owner to be a 'Shoplifter', when they spell 'Shopfitter'. My only excuse is that they're passing at 30 m.p.h. and my eyes and brain are old and slow. Art!
This keeps popping up on Bling, and I inevitably read it as it flashes past as "Certified ScumMaster" to do with "Scum Courses".
This, mind you, whilst I am stonily sober.
Just A Post-Script
I deliberately avoided finishing off and publishing this blog as of last night, and Hay Pesto! I find myself with lots of time on my hands before beginning work, since I got up at 07:45 for a 09:00 start, only to realise whilst I was making my porridge that - it's a 10:00 start today. So. Art!
O my. This work has only just come out, and it's already stoked Pumpkinhead into a frothing paoxysm of rage about the allegations contained within. There are two that may yet come back to bite him on the bottom with all the teeth a shark has: that he's had seven phone calls with Putinpot since leaving office, and he sent expensive COVID testing devices to Putin during the crisis when South Canadians didn't have enough of them. We'll see if Agent Orange pulls his usual first resort of suing the author. Watch this space and bring extra popcorn!
Pip pip!
* I checked - actually since the 1880s.
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