Hee hee. All this has reminded me of an incident in the spcae-opera role-playing game Traveller, many years ago. My character was rolling dice for his chance to be accepted into the Galactic Navy…and failed.
I rolled again to get into the regional navy…and failed.
Only the planetary navy remained. As I picked up the dice, the game master said, with as much sneering disdain as he could muster, “Miss this roll and you’re in the wet navy.”
Sailboat
What difference does it make? The giant space ants are just going to crush us, anyway. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
*Explanation: the ship Lewis & Clark from the movie Event Horizon was actually a futuristic U.S. Coast Guard ship - complete with distinctive racing stripe. Yeah, it was a bad movie, I know.
Indeed, ‘captain’ in the navy is a very high rank. IIRC smaller ships will be commanded by officers of commander or lietenant commander rank; but may be addressed as Captain or Captain Lastname by their crew. At least I think that’s how it works, here’s hoping some real Navy people come along to confirm or refute this.
Essentially correct. A Commanding Officer of a sub or destroyer would usually have the rank/pay grade of Commander or Lt. Commander (O4 or O5). He would be called “Captain” by his crew.
However, higher ranking officers (say, CINCPAC, who would be a three or four star Admiral) would refer to him as “the C.O.”, or “skipper” in third person conversations. While visiting aboard ship, he would probably call him “Captain” while in front of the crew, or “Commander Smith” if he is really pissed, and wanted to remind the skipper just who outranks who, or when in private.
This may not hold up in much smaller craft… I’m not sure.
For example, JFK (a LTjG at the time, an O2) was the Commanding Officer of PT-109. His crew might call him “skipper”. But I doubt that he would have been addressed as “Captain”, or “Captain of the 109”, but instead “C.O. (or skipper) of the 109”.
This holds true for the CG, anyway. An officer in command of any size cutter is called “Captain”. This includes Warrants. If an enlisted person is in command, they are normally are referred to by title (Chief, Senior Chief, etc) or skipper, or whatever the hell they damn well please, but never “Captain”.
There was a little bit of discussion back in 2001 about carving out a Space Corps from the Air Force, sort of like how the Navy has a Marine Corps. Then there were some ideas that maybe there should be a Joint Space Corps, made up of all the military services. Things kind of got bogged down and nothing happened.
FWIW, Donald Rumsfeld was the Chairman of an independent commission which made the recommendation. The commission’s report is here.
A quick history on the disparity between relative ranks of Captain in the land and naval forces (some details glossed over):
In the beginning a military force, a company, was commanded by its captain (usually a ranking noble or gentleman at least), assisted by lieutenants and sergeants.
Also in the beginning – before there were formal navies – a ship was commanded by its master (probably some poor schlub), assisted by his mates.
Periodically, there would be cause to embark a military force upon a ship. The maritime functioning of the ship would be overseen by the master, the only competent mariner, but the overall command would be in the captain, an officer and gentleman.
Once more permanant navies were being establish, there was a officer captain (and lieutenants) put in command of the ship, and the ship’s company, though there was the technician master kept for his navigational expertise.
Vaguely around the same time, military companies were organized into larger formations, with groups of companies organized into regiments led by colonels (leader of a “column” of companies), assisted by lieutenant colonels and sergeants major (a rank later abbreviated as major). Even bigger formations were lead by a colonel general (later abbreviated to general), lieutenant [colonel]generals, and [sergeant] major generals.
Once naval ships came to be very big and important, the captains commanding the largest ships were determined to be of approximately equal rank to land force colonels. It was also realized that some of the smaller ships didn’t need a commanding officer with quite the rank and dignity of a full captain, so the rank commander came about for those in charge of smaller ships.
There were some even smaller vessels that could be overseen by a mere lieutenant. Originally, there was no distinction between a lieutenant commanding a small vessel and a lieutenant serving under a captain or commander on a larger ship, but eventually, after enough folks started signing their letters, “Lieutenant, commanding,” the rank of lieutenant commander came about. On large ships, with multiple lieutenants, one would be designated the first lieutenant, another the second lieutenant, another the third lieutenant, down until they ran out of lieutenants. The master would rank somewhere in among the various lieutenants. Once the age of sail passed into steam, the post of master sort of merged into the lieutenant ranks, so now we have lieutenant ranks in the of lieutenant commander, lieutenant, lieutenant junior grade and ensign (called sub-lieutenant in the British navy).
Essentially what in the land forces became the officers of the smallest full military units, the captain and his lieutenants, also became the officers of the smallest full naval units, the captain and his lieutenants. However, because the size of a ship was so much large than that of a military company, the relative ranks of their captains diverged.
As to the OP’s question, based on this history, it would make sense for space “ship” units to be based on the naval rank structures, assuming that the ships would be substantial enough to be commanded by someone at or near a naval captain/colonel level.
BTW, Eltanin just reminded me that there are “civilian” Federal agencies that also contain a paramilitary officer corps – the US Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have officer corps that are legally “uniformed services”. They use naval stylings and fashions, though technically the USPHS has a set of job-description-based “ranks” to go with their O-grades. The Coast Guard Auxiliary, who are not on the payroll, do wear naval-styled insignia but their “rank” is their job/post description. In all 3 cases, the adoption of naval stylings was historically logical – the Coast Survey used those officers to run their charting/research ships before merging with NOAA, the CG Auxiliary is an adjunct to the CG, and the USPHS was tasked with providing medical services to the Merchant Marine and nowadays to the CG.
As was mentioned upthread, the USAF uses land-force ranking due to having spun off from the Army; most world air forces followed a similar trajectory. The RAF is peculiar in that they got structured in such a manner as to create a mix of land-force-like titles, sea-force-like titles and job-description titles . Their NCOs wear Army-like chevrons, the commissioned officers wear Navy-based (but very distinct) cuff braid.
As it stands, currently ALL the US armed services contain aviation units, with FW and RW pilots, weapons officers, crew chiefs, parachute riggers, squadron commanders, etc., who hold equivalent jobs thought they have the service-appropriate rank titles. Ditto for those doing the actual management of bases and stations: regardless of title, someone is the base commander, someone is his/her assistant, somebody is in charge of security, etc., whatever device is pinned to their shoulder. Hell, the ARMY has for a long time had a fleet of transport vessels at sea, with CWO skippers and SSG bos’uns.
Nothing precludes that in the evolution of a SpaceForce/SpaceFleet/SpaceGuard, you would eventually come up with a peculiar, mission-appropriate set of “ranks” that are more job-description-based than based on the traditional styles. Or that it will appropriate either or parts of both the land- and sea- forces stylings to come up with something that fits the organization even better.
. . .
And of course, every twenty years some COS/Commandant would decide that the color and cut of the dress uniform jacket needs changing, or the spacesuits need to match Titanian camouflage as well as Martian, or that the purple beret, with puff, will be replaced by an orange kepi, with feather, ticking off all the longtimers when they learn that this one cannot be centrifuged clean but needs to be irradiated 
Thus my tonge in cheek post. All present level of military will press to have there people represented in space. Many with good reason. The task will be varied and the tax money too lucrative for them to ignore.
My bet is that the Air Force will be first.
Please excuse my mis-spellings, I’m on a blackberry.
But should thud not be moved to IMHO? There does not seem to be a factual response to this post.
There was an article I thought I rememered reading in Air & Space Power Journal, that talked about evolving a “U.S. Space Force” out of the U.S. Air Force, if necessary. IIRC, it went on to recommend that it wouldn’t be necessary, that the Space Force would be attached to the USAF much like the Marine Corps is attached to the Navy–somewhat independent and autonomous, but ultimately reporting.
I will comment though, that knowing a few BUFF and Bone drivers (B-52 and B-1, or ‘B-One’, get it?), they don’t call them the “Captain” of the ship: it’s the ‘Aircraft Commander’. Methinks that would carry over to the spacecraft, but more along the lines of the ‘Mission Commander’. Eventually that might further evolve into “Captain”, but we ain’t got a fleet yet.
Tripler
Dang, now I’ll have to find that cite. . .
The cite you’re looking for is in post #27. And it’s Space Corps, not Force.
And an innie definitely outranks an outie (yeck).
No, it ain’t.
There is serious discussion about this and the doctrine, but for once, the theory and doctrine are actually ahead of the execution.
Tripler
All of the benefits of realizing the worthiness of doctrine, I guess. (Thanks a lot, “SOS”).
I believe the rank of general originated with the designation “captain general,” not “colonel general.”
Well then, apologies, sir.
No, I ought to apologize. My apologies for coming across like an arsehole. I took your post to mean that you’d found my cite to Air & Space Power. . .
I didnt’ realize it until now. :smack:
Both existed. In the really, really old times (medieval, early Renaissance), there weren’t real grade scales, commanding officers were “captains” and their assistants, “lieutenants”, regardless if you were in charge of a hunderd or a thousand. It was not uncommon to have the top officer of an Army styled the captain-general and his assistant the lieutenant-general; field grades as mentioned were a later addition. Spain, for one, has kept the office of Captain-General, used now to mean head of a regional command, into modern times, while the “rank” technically still exists but is normally only held by the King. But in many armies the pattern was that upon adoption of stardardized field grades, the next move is to standardize the upper grades by tacking on “-general” to the field-officer rank titles, displacing the old titlings. Field Marshal, another old-time command title, literally the guy who organizes deployment on the field, was variously either abandoned, kept as actual rank, or kept as a special title or office. Various national/linguistic groups saw an evolution of the titling of other grades as armies became more complicated, parallel structures evolved, time passed, and there was contact and exchange of info thru trade, warfare, shifting alliances and dynasties, books on tactics, etc., so eventually the various systems converged, specially under the great influence of first, Prussian, and later, Napoleonic terminologies.
I understand this. However, I don’t understand whether you are disagreeing with my point, that the first use of “general” as a title/rank/job description was as a contraction of “captain general.” “Colonel general” and other general ranks came afterward.