Customs of the spaceways... or... arr, we killed him to conserve oxygen!

[ffutures]

A friend posted something friendlocked that included a reference to one of the more fascinating series of trials of the 19th century, which established that an ancient "custom of the sea" did not justify murder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens

Now I think that when I eventually get to the space travel section there really needs to be a section on "Customs of the spaceways," possibly including the meat of this case, and maybe, in Churchill's words, "rum, sodomy, and the lash." In a clean-cut American influenced sort of way, of course...

Any suggestions?

Comments

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

I figured as much for the Red Shirt, it was just a something that popped into my head.

Since these stories were written during Prohibition, one can make a case for most ships being "wet". At least one or more "vacuum stills" in use on board a ship. The crew probably gets a liquor ration as well.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

There's nothing to say either way about booze - there's certainly some drug addiction around, one of the villains is a "hexylamine" addict, I'm assuming that they're talking about some derivative since actual Hexylamine is very nasty and (as far as I know) not a narcotic - it's certainly not a controlled substance, we buy it from ordinary lab suppliers without any special paperwork.