All of the following slang/jargon shamelessly culled from Sagittarius Eye issue 18 (Feb 3305)
Bear bait: abandoned cargo in an area with law enforcement nearby just waiting to scan you.
Riding bareback: foregoing a shield in favour of more cargo space. Generally a bad idea.
Dog House: an outpost with a black market frequented by pirates and/or bounty hunters, used as their base.
Dragonfly: a ship with no power/thrusters/fuel. Dead in space.
Go-go juice: fuel scooping at a sun (often while stationary, shaking like crazy).
Icarus: taking hull damage while flying too close to a star: “I pulled an Icarus fuel scooping.”
Shot in the back: being scanned just as you’re entering the letterbox.
Supercruiser: one who brags about himself, or his big, fast, shiny ship.
Through the woods: going through unpopulated regions to reach your destination.
Too many eggs in the basket: cargo weight affecting your jump range.
Blat: to crash your ship into an asteroid and destroy it (the ship).
Claim: your preferred mining field, especially if you feel you found it first.
Claim jumping: when someone in a bigger ship comes to your ‘claim’ and you’re afraid they’re going to bleed it dry.
Creeper/Drifter: opportunist; someone who sneaks in to steal ore, especially chunks lost from ‘fly catching’ (see below).
Drift: the rotation of an asteroid. Slow ‘drifts’ are easier to mine.
Dufferdom: a complete failure as a miner.
Fly catching: chasing after ore fragments that have drifted away.
Hatter: a miner that works solo instead of with a team (mad as a hatter).
Rock hobbit: a classier and more civilised sort of ‘rock hermit’ who knows the meaning of comfort and isn’t afraid to have guests. Plenty of cakes in storage.
Roll up: assemble for a meeting. A group of miners might ‘roll up’ to decide how to deal with a pirating problem, for example.
Salting: telling someone a particular ‘claim’ is full of valuable metals, usually in an attempt to steer them away from a better claim. Some of the more elaborate and unscrupulous people will actually leave some high-quality metal there for a person to ‘find’.
Tommyknocker: a contact on the edge of your radar range, not coming close enough to resolve. Makes miners nervous.
Jonk: a contraction of ‘jump and honk’. To jump in and immediately out of systems; a means of travelling long interstellar distances quickly.
Buckyball: to travel as quickly as possible over long interstellar distances, often via ‘jonking’.
Badlands: a region of brown dwarfs, every explorer’s nightmare.
Bagged and tagged: describes a fully explored system, down to the last moon.
Banquet: a system containing far more interesting stars, planets and other objects than you expected.
B a s tar d: a T Tauri star, unscoopable but often resembling a main sequence star.
Bowman: an explorer (some female explorers prefer ‘Janeway’).
Bowman Boogie: reaching 2001c (often happens if a second star is really far away and you’re just that much of a completionist).
Bowman Blues: the low mood an explorer feels after having been in civilised space for some time.
Budget Bowman: an explorer in a Sidewinder or an Adder.
Closed gas station: a T Tauri star that looks scoopable at first.
Columbused: you thought you were first in an area, only to find someone else got there before you.
Comet: an explorer who gives up quickly and goes back to the Bubble. Exploring isn’t for everyone.
Costner system: a system containing multiple water worlds.
Countdown dementia: when you’ve become utterly sick of your onboard computer’s voice. Some explorers have smashed their speakers before realising the voice can be switched off.
Disco party: finding a large number of unidentified objects using the Discovery Scanner.
Flying brick: a Lakon Type-6, while a hauler by design, is easily converted into a tolerable long-range explorer with a great cockpit view. Also called a ‘flying pig’. See also ‘space cow’.
Gazed into the abyss: describes someone who has been out so long they’ve gone a bit nutty. Could be harmless or eccentric, could be dangerous. Also known as ‘space madness’.
Hydrogen headbutt: flying headlong into a star (usually due to inattention).
In a gadda da vida: a system containing two or more Earth-like planets.
Last homely house: the final station you see before you venture into unpopulated areas. It is traditional to stop and have a drink.
Lighthouse: a beacon or otherwise noteworthy system used in general interstellar navigation.
Longest mile: the return trip after an expedition. Usually, your ship is in poor shape and you’re worried you might not make it back at all.
Ratsignal: a call for help to the Fuel Rats, because you’re stranded in deep space without fuel. Use with extreme caution. It is considered very poor form to use this word in any context other than an emergency.
Ratted up: an exploration ship is Fuel Rat compliant, with at least a fuel limpet controller and a number of fuel limpets so that the pilot can assist in deep space rescue if called upon.
Record store: a system containing mostly ringed planets/orbital bodies.
Shiny Bowman: an explorer in an Imperial Clipper or other ship designed with comfort and luxury in mind.
Shotgun wedding: accidentally flying into a planet’s ring.
Space cow: as with ‘flying brick,’ but the Lakon Type-9.
Spare tire: an extra fuel tank added to your ship.
Topside: to fly ‘up’ (or ‘down’) in a system a long way, so you can turn and easily see all the elliptical orbits. Going ‘topside’ is one way to spot a black hole.
Turnwise: travelling with the Galactic rotation (clockwise on the Galaxy Map). Also known as ‘Spinward’.
Wedged in the inferno: jumping to a close binary star system and landing between close-orbiting stars. Dreaded by explorers. Also called ‘the crush’, or ‘this is fine’.
Widdershins: travelling against the Galactic rotation (counter-clockwise on the Galaxy Map). Also known as ‘tracking’.
Battle Buggie: SRV (used as a pejorative).
Blood Money: money lost in the pursuit of a target, typically in the form of fines.
Bloodsuckers: collectors of those fines.
Brother (or Sister): a fellow pirate. The Brotherhood or Sisterhood refers to an alliance of pirates.
Coreward: towards the heavily populated centre of human space, or towards the capital planet of one faction (e.g., Sol). Confusingly, explorers use this to refer to the Galactic Centre.
Ghosting: using ‘silent running’ to close in on an acquisition or otherwise tail them unseen
Jeremiah Weed: refers to top-shelf alcohol, regardless of its actual name (for example, Indi Bourbon). The preferred brand will vary from sector to sector. Often drunk to celebrate a big score.
Ninja: to steal a kill (and bounty) from someone else.
Pig in space: denotes poor flying skill.
Popcorn: used by owners of large ships such as Anacondas to describe being attacked by smaller, easily-destroyed ships like Sidewinders or Condors.
Rimward: leaving civilized space, out towards the galactic rim.
Sniff: to use any kind of scanner on a ship to determine if a target has a bounty, ascertain whether they carry illegal goods, track their wake signals, etc.
