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Red dwarf from a T.V program i like, i think the nova suites the name well (i also use starbug for my smaller ships)

All my ships have the same name. WOK, which is my guild initials. That way when someone selects me in space they see the same thing they see on ground. I know it seems lame but it works for me =)

My X-Wing has an all-purple paint job and is named Purple Imp Eater. Meaning should be obvious.

My Sorosuub was originally named the "Not For Hire". It was taken from the novel "The Fabulous Riverboat" by Philip Jose Farmer. It's the second of the Riverworld books, about the entire human race finding itself on the banks of a ten-million mile long river on a distant planet and nobody can permanently die anymore. Anyhoo, in this book Mark Twain sets out to build a riverboat (like the kind he used to pilot in his youth on Earth) and he names it the "Not For Hire".

I thought that was a pretty neat sci-fi reference so that's what my own "boat" got named. Then I thought that it might be *too* obscure... so I renamed it the "Mare Of Steel". Sounds pretty inocuous and almost made-up, until I tell people where it REALLY comes from

The "Mare Of Steel" gets her name from "The Long Ships", an old Sixties movie with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier. Widmark plays this Viking guy who gets his crew to steal their king's funeral ship so they can sail toward Africa to find this island that supposedly has this old monastery, inside of which is a bell "as big as three tall men" made of pure gold. Poitier plays this Moorish sultan who wants to find the bell too so when Widmark's guy (who's the only one who's actually heard the bell, far off during a storm) ends up crashing the ship on the coast North Africa, he and his men are taken captive and told to help the Moors get the bell. The Vikings refuse but it's only after they go hogwild in the sultan's private harem that they get shown the "incentive program"...

Widmark's guy is told that he's gonna ride the "Mare of Steel". He gets taken outside in front of everybody including his own men and gets to see the Mare and the sultan comments that he doesn't look scared but turns out that's 'cuz he has no idea WHAT the heck this thing is or how it works. So he gets a demonstration: the sultan orders his wife to pick one of his own guards to ride the thing. She goes down the file and stops and one and asks him "Do you believe in Allah?" He nods and she says "Go then." His eyes go all bug-eyed but does as he says and climbs up the steps to the Mare of Steel. Now, you know how a guillotine drops the blade down onto the guy? Well, the Mare of Steel drops the *guy* onto the blade! Imagine a 3-story tall playground sliding board... 'cept instead of a board it's a long curving razor blade. The poor dude is made to kneel on this little platform which then gives way and sends him sliding down that razor blade belly-first. Oh yeah there's a big pad of metal spikes at the bottom of the blade. Suffice it to say he's bisected/cut to slivers by the time what's left of him hits the spikes.

That's why I laugh so much whenever I ask someone if they want to ride the Mare Of Steel

(Pretty good movie BTW.)