Re: Promos, Planes, & Hackle

From: Michael J. Rider <jaguar_at_warwick.net>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 19:08:24 -0400

Paul Kemner wrote:

>Could be that MWI was a trenches-and-artillery sort of affair, but that
>aviation was still in the lighter-than-air stage (Armored Zeps with light
>artillery guns! Oh boy! They would appeal to a navy-dominated military-
>Battleships of the Skies. Who would think that those flimsy wood-and-cloth
>toys would be good for anything in war?) MWII could have the mech cavalry of
>WWII, but with biplanes. Or the Kat planet could have
>one-country(city-state) per island if it's mostly H2O with no large
>continents. Then the navy would dominate- and they certainly didn't like
>planes or carriers when they were new!

Armored zepplins? Excuse me. The key word here is _lighter_ than air.
Zepplins in WWI depended on being invisible above clouds in order to reach
their targets and "cloud cars" hanging from long cables to sight for
bombing. Biplanes might make more sense in carrier based warfare at the
same level of techology. Navy planes are always built with lower stall
speeds to make carrier landings and takeoffs easier. This might make up
for the loss in range and speed from increased drag in exclusively carrier
based warfare.

>Hackle(von Braun) and the rocket thing- I think that might account for why
>he keeps trying to reform Mac & Molly. He signed on with the bad guys
>because he thought that was the only way to take Kats to the Stars. (flash
>to a young Hackle as consultant to Die Katt in Monde {cf Fritz Lang's Die
>Frau im Monde-1929 film, kids). Of course Hackle was kept isolated in the
>development compound, so he wouldn't have heard any morale-destroying news,
>but he still feels guilty about being on the wrong side. Robots, he reasons,
>don't have any of the illogical hatreds, failures, and reflexes of his
>former masters, so he can create something that's truly good. He's not
>senile! But he can't believe that Mac & Molly are truly bad. He must have
>made a slight miscalculation somewhere- something that is possible to fix.
>Without their agressive hormones, M&M should be pure beings with a desire to
>help Katkind. That's why he keeps hauling them back & fixing them.

Remember that the real Von Braun was a member of the party and supporter of
Hitler's policies. Operation paperclip "sanitized" his records along with
the rest of the rocket scientists and others.

Hackle should be getting the message by now that Mac and Molly aren't the
saints he seems to think they are. They are downloaded kats after all and
not just machines that can be reprogrammed without wiping out their
personalities. Not to mention they wouldn't make very good villians in
they acted in the best interest of katkind.

--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael J. Rider, jaguar_at_warwick.net (Jason_Jaguar on FurryMUCK) |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brain> Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? |
| Pinky> Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a |
| career... oooh, it's all too much for me. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+



Received on Tue Apr 23 1996 - 19:38:25 PDT