Comments | sg_research: Prometheus and Daedalus -- names?

saphanibaal in sg_research

Prometheus and Daedalus -- names?

Nov 25, 2007 10:51

Does anyone know whether the names were chosen solely with respect to their mythological bearers, whether they are a nod to Macross, or whether both instances are a reference to something disgustingly famous that I'm just not getting? Because both names in succession seem a little too apt to be pure coincidence, but I haven't located a common ( Read more... )

Comments 7

spiletta42 November 25 2007, 15:59:10 UTC

Prometheus was the codename of the project, and ended up the name of the ship by default. It's apt because it's Earth's first interstellar ship, built with reverse engineered technology. Having used that name probably set the tone for future name choices.

saphanibaal November 25 2007, 18:59:52 UTC

I understand that it did set a precedent for names out of Greek mythology, but immediately following it up with Daedalus, right arm to Prometheus's left, (rather than, say, Heracles or Hephaestus or Athena) smacks of in-joke somewhere.

spiletta42 November 25 2007, 19:43:45 UTC

Well, it's flight related, and new-technology related, not just Greek.

lizardbeth_j November 25 2007, 23:54:41 UTC

It's certainly possible that the Daedalus was chosen because someone in the crew's a Macross fan, but there's no commentary or whatever I can think of that says so. But the overall trend is clearly mythological references to flight/journeys/technology: Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, and Apollo.

There's also the Korolev- the Russian-manned Deep Space Carrier built after Odyssey, which is named for a real Russian scientist.

saphanibaal November 26 2007, 00:53:28 UTC

Although it does take the trend a little while to become apparent (and I'm still not sure what Apollo's doing in there, unless it's a music-and-math connection), and it would have made almost as much sense to pick, say, Vulcan or Iris for the second ship and stick to all gods for the U.S.-based ones.

Has there been an Argo yet?

It does make sense that the Russians decided on their own naming scheme.

Actually, I was sort of expecting that someone would say "Oh yes, the Prometheus and Daedalus were the two ships from [Insert Reasonably Popular '50s/'60s Film Here]," as I tend not to get those sorts of references. ^_^

lizardbeth_j November 26 2007, 05:14:52 UTC

maybe they (within the SG-verse, I mean) started to run into problems of calling the ships after Goa'uld, if they stuck with the names of gods... Can you imagine if the SGC ended up calling a ship after some False God who went around butchering Jaffa eight hundred years ago? yeah, it would be ugly.

heh, no, it's not like the Nostromo or anything like that, so far as I know. I think TPTB just started out with the Prometheus and then kept up with the vaguely mythological connections. And the Apollo isn't really after the god - it's probably a more specific reference to the Apollo space program of the 60's and 70's.

luminare_ardua November 27 2007, 10:22:29 UTC

Well, but Apollo was also the patron of the sciences, and being the slayer of the mosnter Python, is associated with battle and victory--the ancient Romans sang paeans in his praise before entering battle, marching off to war or sailing off towards it as the case might be, and after the Romans won a war. Maybe whoever was in charge of naming the ships liked that idea of association with victory.