Spacefaring Superstitions

great stuff, thank you

another of my own:
bad luck to keep a corpse on board, as it could contaminate the air supply. if someone dies aboard a ship while in space, they're jettisoned on course for their homeworld, to burn up in atmosphere. if their homeworld has no atmosphere, then they're lit with the ship's thrusters

>Mandatory staring woman

The Staring Woman must be a Veeky Forums space-horror classic by now, given how many times she's been mentioned and adapted.

space bars are my favorite

here's some from one of the other threads:
>It's thought to be good luck to bring a little piece of Earth, and later Mars, along with you on a long space flight. Most often, this takes the form of a small stone or pebble that can be carried in a pocket, but potted plants or small jars of dirt by themselves are not terribly uncommon.

>Tapping, drumming or banging on machinery and especially against bulkheads or the hull is considered tremendously bad luck.

>New crewmates on modern tramp ships and military vessels of the past often willingly spend an hour inside the airlock without a spacesuit, tresting the moderate cold and the threat of a crewmate opening the outer door as a rite of passage and test of trust. Newbies who don't last the hour or don't enter the airlock at all are mocked as cowards.
>If you're a professional spacer, you must always kiss Earth when you return to it. It is believed that if you wouldn't show respect the planet will disown you, and you will never see its surface again.

I've never heard of the staring woman. Sounds fantastic. Do you happen to have more/know where i can find more? I've found one archived thread mentioning her, but that seemed to be more of a horror scenario than a superstition

Spacers believe that wishing for a 'safe landing' and 'safe return' actually attracts bad luck for some reason, similar to theatre suspertition, so they wish each other 'crash slow'.

Put dirt inside your boot on the sole, from your homeworld, if it's your first time going to space. So your feet find their way back home.

During moments were two ships are docked together, never have sex with a crew member of the other ship inside your own. If both side hold this supertition this usually mean neither wants to be the one to bring the other one to their quarters. It's believed that the other spacer can 'steal' the luck of a ship by fucking someone from other crew. This doesnt count for space ports and being planet side, only in ship to ship docking.

Nobody knows ow this start but all the ships from X sector have canaries on the cockpit, living in a cage, even official military vessels. It's a veeeery bad omen when the canary dies.

If you sneeze, you have to touch the ship hull as fast as possible.

If you find a mole that you didn't remember having after a space trip, it means you are going to die soon.

If you sight a black dog in a soviet space suit inside your ship, or dream with it, its a sign you are going to die soon.

Toilet/bedroom/kitchen/office

Shit were you wash

Taking a deep breath when a bulkhead opens, incase it was not pressurized on the other side, that big gulp of air could keep you alive for a few seconds longer to get to the override switch.

Also related is the clenching your fist, related to the early space flights where when bulkheads opened they might still be faulty and generate a suction as air rushed out/in. Peope used to make sure they had a hold of something, now it is symbolized as a clenched fist.

It's not bad luck, it is common sense. Limited air supply and people living in crowded areas is a haven for bacteria and sickness. If you fire it at their homeworld you have use created a rocket. Force = mass x acceleration, if you fire it with sufficient force it will remain such until it hits another ship or plantary body.

Some more i'm nabbing from one of the old threads

>Some of the most superstitious sailors get tattoos that proclaim them as belonging to Earth, charts of the night sky as seen from Earth, names of the Earth in as many languages as they can, ect. The representations very from person to person but they persist on the belief that the Earth will take care of it's own and she will always bring them back home.
It is considered extremely bad luck to get these tattoos on any other planet.

I love the idea of people always viewing earth as home, even people who've never set foot on it. It could become some mythical concept to them.

...

that lying position with the hands up looks uncomfortable as shit and so do the curved beds

I would really love an actual staring woman comic based on that page

If I magically had amazing drawing talent overnight that's probably the thing I would make with it.

if you come to stay at a circular station for an extended period of time, you must travel around the entire thing once. for smaller stations this is as simple as a short walk. for larger city-sized stations you can ride a train or drive around it

She's been mentioned off and on, throughout the different Space Horror threads for several years now, but as far as I know, the Staring Woman has been portrayed in three interconnected ways that work well superstitiously.

The first is that she is that she can be treated as a simple paranormal sighting, a ghostly, freeze-dried reminder of some astronautical disaster long past that wayfarers traversing a certain sector of space may happen to see. The second builds on this by making her some kind of "observer" that spacers feel is willfully floating into camera view and appearing outside the portholes of any passing ship that somehow catches her fancy. The third builds on this again by making the Staring Woman an ill omen of impending disaster aboard whichever ship is unlucky enough to spot her.

Additionally, there was talk about a fourth "level" of personification in which the Staring Woman would try to enter these unfortunate spacecraft, actively bringing disaster with aboard with her rather than simply warning those who see her of its coming.

If you reside on a circular station it's good manners to circumnavigate it once a local year to prove you're not a squatter or a tourist. Most people do this on the station's founding day, which is a holiday; volunteer tour guides man the trams and buses used for this. In the morning there's a marathon, but it ends short of the station's official mile zero - most residents participating in the holiday leave their vehicles and join a massive crowd walking the last half-mile.

Non-ringborn travelers are often confused by these crowds.

>I love the idea of people always viewing earth as home, even people who've never set foot on it. It could become some mythical concept to them.

E.C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series concerns a wandering spacer trying to find his way to the homeworld of mankind, through all the false rumors that flow along the ancient spacelanes.

Plug in your headphones, OP. I've got some mandatory listening for ya.

youtube.com/watch?v=D5p8YhhaVlA

youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4

youtube.com/watch?v=3WDRxtd-2dQ

youtube.com/watch?v=-mO7vkdkJhg

That last one is my absolute favorite, but all are pretty high up there in my personal rankings.

hey OP not this guy

but you should listen to it. especially the song user forgot the most relevant one.

youtube.com/watch?v=UqU7W8LdRd4

Shit, I knew I was leaving one out. A thousand times that song as well, OP.

;~;7

Don't bury a spaceman on a planet. Everyone that is born in space belongs to the stars.

The same rule is for colonists and terrans. They belong to their homeworlds.

going to add that it's necessary to play songs about the christian during spacefights, just so i have an excuse to play it at sessions. thanks, friends.

Stay away from these old Chinese colony ships.

Giant coffins filled with desperate ghosts.

If your the comms officer you must always investigate the radio noise and never ignore them. The reason being it could actually be someone hailing for help but it's believed that if you ignore a plea for help yours will be ignored in kind.

Some Spacers will get rudimentary tattoos of star charts to their home whether it be a colony or a planet in the belief that if they are ever voided their spirit can find it's way home.

>Some Spacers will get rudimentary tattoos of star charts to their home whether it be a colony or a planet in the belief that if they are ever voided their spirit can find it's way home.

Also keep a piece of your Homeworld or the ship you are born with you.

Egineers are often mocked for "sweet talking" their ships as they conduct repairs but there is always the persistant belief that if you neglect the ships feelings she'll have no problem failing on you when you need her most

You always have a pocket for nonchalant spair parts: you never know when it might come in handy

Often during the ships construction a coin is welded into place on the comms array to ensure good fortune.

I rather like this idea.

Never hunt down escape-pods, even if you just destroyed the Ship of your worst nemesis.

Dont insult a ship or its equipment ,ever.

Dont sleep with another spacers spouse.

There is a special hell for pirates and raiders.

Dont look into black holes directly. Use sensors, not your helmets visor or the bridge-windows.

>If you find a mole that you didn't remember having after a space trip, it means you are going to die soon.

I laughed.

I thought you wanted to breathe out before vacuum because otherwise the mechanical pressure of the vaccum on your lungs will just rip it out between your lips.

Always knock 3 times on the door to the head before entering or if you pass the door and hear 3 knocks from inside
If you're stuck in the head and need help from someone outside, knock 5 times on the door.

>Stay away from these old Chinese colony ships.Giant coffins filled with desperate ghosts

Back in the year 21XX, when colonization of the Solar System was in its infancy, China wanted to demonstrate its spacefaring might by establishing more extraterrestrial settlements than any other nation on Earth, as quickly as possible. As a result, their colony ships were hastily put together, manned by rookie crews and passengered by just as many criminals and political dissidents as there were legitimate volunteers.

It comes as no surprise then that the program was plagued by disaster, and that remnants of that tragic folly continue to haunt and unnerve modern spacers.

Use two pair of boots, one while on board and one when docked.

Seeing fragments of old ships is a sign of very bad luck.

Functional ships within sight of the naked eye always prompts a friendly greeting.

Smugglers deserve as much respect as any other spacer, pirates and raiders do not.

Never EVER investigate a seemingly abandoned vessel.

Never bring a species you don't recognise onto the ship.

while preparing to repel borders its customary to tap your tac helm 3 times, but no more.

its customary for a sec member to receive a small simple copper star when they first join up with a ship and/or spacestation from their fellow sec. its bad luck to let it tarnish.

additionally, upon completion of their duties or untimely demise, said star is to be released into space.

It's bad luck to bring candles aboard ship

Orbiting one complete circuit of a planet before landing is good luck

the spacers saints is one of my favourite bits of Veeky Forums homebrew.

I love threads like these. I remember the sci-fi folk song one and had an idea for one in my head about a guy singing about his life as a Martian essentially but now I can't remember the lyrics I came up with it.

It's customary to send the dead who die in space out the airlock in the direction of their home world otherwise they'll haunt your ship in retaliation for cursing them to wander the stars.

Remember when walking through an airlock to tap your boots on the other side or slap the top of the door to test the seals and as a sign of good luck.

>It's unlucky to dance in the space around mars
>it's unlucky not to dance in the space around Venus
>if you've got bad news to tell someone that isn't urgent, it's customary to do it before coming into orbit around mercury, or after you've left orbit of mercury, and never during.
>if something becomes twisted in freefall, it's customary to twist it up the opposite way before leaving it straightened
>it's customary to tie a personal effect to an air-vent outlet on your ship before doing an EVA
>it's bad luck to remove an object tied to an air-vent by a person who didn't return from an EVA
>it's good luck to eject a harmonica out of an airlock before you've completed your first orbit of jupiter, and bad luck for a harmonica to leave the ship after that first orbit
>it's good luck for the crew to eat icecream after refueling from the surface of Titan, Pluto or Europa, but bad luck to eat ice cream after the ship has launched from the surface.

>It is considered bad luck to be the ONLY low-ranking crew member to accompany the command staff to the surface of an unexplored planet.

>Often cited is the tale of Ensign Ricky. The legend of what exactly happened to the poor Ensign almost always changes with each telling of the tale, but two facts always remain the same.

>That he was the ONLY low ranking member of the crew on that particular mission, and that he was wearing a red uniform.

Golden, will have to use it the next time I run star wars.

Naw lad, the the captain and the chief engineer can insult their ship, so long as it's all in good fun. They can expect the ship to reciprocate in kind with a few pranks of it's own

You forgot the ballad of the slowboaters youtube.com/watch?v=ud6LiVJkwyA

Never know when you'll need those poor souls' favour

Transhumans take new names after their first major augment. It is considered very rude to call them by their "mundane" name anytime after that.

>If you sight a black dog in a soviet space suit inside your ship, or dream with it, its a sign you are going to die soon.
>Soviet Space Barghest
Holy shit, I never knew just how much I wanted this.

I think that always keeping an animal on board is bad. There are many reasong why you wouldn't want one, and none about why you would.

Animals are useless in an spaceship. They don't have to hunt rodents, or guard anything, they serve just as pets.

Among the many reasons to keep pets away, they're unsanitary, they shed hairs and poop.
They might need their own food, have extra bio of bacteria and diseases, and won't have veterinary help in space.

If you have a superstition about pets, make it so that pets are usually completely forbidden, even for a stroll.
Motivation could come ftom early space exploration, which were costly and ran by the armed forces/government, so they banned all crew from carrying any sort of pet.
Tech advanvec and private citizens can own spaceships, but tradition stuck.

>Never ever depart a planet with any single spacesuit in storage that hasn't been cleaned and checked, even if they were cleaned and checked before, or you intend to do it in orbit.

>Always do a short flush burst before using any vacuum toilets, to know that the vacuum pump didn't accidentally have a breach to space.

>Sticking with the topic, always always always test the waste management system of a new spacesuit BEFORE going outside with it for the first time, even if it's a model you've worn before.

>If a new ship didn't register any micrometeorite impacts on the first day of it's use, that's a bad sign. If it doesn't register any in the first five days, you might as well abandon ship, because you're sure to hit a deadly swarm of them soon.

>Never load oxygen tanks to exactly 100%. You can go lower, or higher, but if you leave it at 100% you wouldn't be able to tell if the fill level display is hacked or broken.

>It's good luck to have a solar panel of whatever size on or in every ship, even if the ship relies exclusively on other forms of generators.

>It's bad luck to drive a rover into a rock on mars. This should seem trivial, but by now every vehicle capable of transporting humans can easily withstand and shrug off a collision like that.

>Sticking with mars, in a belief connected to the ancient rovers that first inhabited mars, it's bad luck if any moving vehicle (spaceship, shuttle, rover, scooter) coming from mars has "spirit" in it's name, while it is good luck for any stationary thing (bases, towns, spacestations, landmarks). It is just the other way around with "opportunity".

>While in earth orbit try to catch a glimpse of the planet at least once each day to ward off bad luck and homesickness.

>Never ever let go of the spaceship's hull on your very first eva, even if you have a maneuvering backpack attached to your suit, no matter how experienced.

>People born in space believe that wishing them a safe "reentry" or "landing" is very bad luck.

Lad, what sort of stick-up-their butt corp did you sign on with? A ship without a cat or the like is a ship without a soul.
Next you'll be telling me that you don't do airlock-hazing? Or that you'd replace a ship's heartbone?

>The Skintight uniforms that they hand out to you ARE NEVER fully sealed unless you have proper equipment (i.e. helmets, gloves, etc.)

>Although most spacers will deny any actual belief in it, there exists a "Cult of the Firsts" that venerates the pioneers of human space flight.

>One might wish for the blessing of Armstrong and Aldrin before settling foot on a celestial body for the first time.

>Or ask for guidance from Lovell, Swigert, and Haise during a severe spacecraft failure.

>Or call upon the first moon and Mars colonists when founding a new colony.

>But the holiest of them all is Yuri Gagarin. THE FIRST. The first human in space holds a special place in the hearts and minds of all spacers. Especially ship captains.

>Oddly enough, it's the pioneers of rocketry itself that are revered by starship engineers. Men like Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun.

Don't look out the windows while in FTL, it'll give you Alzhiemer's

>It's good luck to have a solar panel of whatever size on or in every ship, even if the ship relies exclusively on other forms of generators.

This makes me think of Serenity's front panel-thingy. I think it looks kinda photovoltaic?

>People born in space believe that wishing them a safe "reentry" or "landing" is very bad luck.

and this is good, very theatre folk like

On another note, it's a commonly held saying amongst spacers that the most senior engineer on a ship's heart beats in time with the pulse of the drive. "Drive-hearted" is a more polite word for "spacing vagrant"

Aye, the saints are holy, even though Earth may be forgotten.

It also explains why captains (and sometimes the rest of the crew) piss on a wheel before leaving dock. The more frequented docks have a wheel off in the corner special for this purpose

A superstition like that would never stick. Dirtsiders love their pets too much to leave them behind just because grizzled old fuck in a vacc suit says it's "bad luck." It wouldn't be long before the younger spacers laugh at the older spacers, and pic related becomes common.

Taking someone on their first spaceflight is considered both good and bad luck. Good luck in that nothing major ever goes wrong on someone's first spaceflight, bad because that's when all the little things go wrong.

A ship carrying someone on their first FTL hop on the other hand, is practically guaranteed to have something go horrifically wrong.

Some engineers will install an additional switch on their console board. This switch will only have one wire running in, but practitioners will insist that the switch controls a component whose name sounds important but is, in fact, utter nonsense.

Ships have a finite store of luck. This store cannot be replenished, but docking with a ship can equalize the luck between them. Many a new ship has had its life cut short, and many an old one lived beyond their years, thanks to rookie pilots unaware of this fact.

>taking aboard a creature specially designed by God to lay upon buttons, consoles and keyboards

The Spacer Saints are a favorite of mine too. There's filk to go along with the, but I neglected to save the image. I'm sure it's in the archived threads alongside the Saints' roster.

Green on blue doesn't look too nice...

-While the benefits of having a cat on a spaceship are scientifically proven (purring increases bone density and counteracts zero-g caused problems), people without cats like to touch one before they go on long space missions.

-Kids on low gravity worlds are told that doing 1g exercises will make them tougher in space and ward off space-sickness.

-If someone has punctured their spacesuit once, they won't have it punctured a second time. Doing this deliberately negates the effect.

-If a system has no backup it is guaranteed to fail.

-Before going outside, always tap on the glass of your spacesuit helmets to make sure there are no fissures that could make it burst.

>This makes me think of Serenity's front panel-thingy. I think it looks kinda photovoltaic?
Huh... now that you mention it, yea.

-Bragging about your first trip into space is bad luck.

-At the moment of manual docking pilots close their eyes and listen for the sound of the docking clamp, even it it can't really be made out.

absolutely barbaric.

>A ship carrying someone on their first FTL hop on the other hand, is practically guaranteed to have something go horrifically wrong.
Good ones except for this one. Too easy to disprove.
Same with the luck thing.

Spacer cats know not to sit on consoles, having learnt from getting thrown off them roughly during emergencies

>absolutely barbaric.

Gagarin did it, and he was the first to make it back from the great black

You're forgetting the existant mythologies about cats as guardians of the dead. A cat is very important on a ship, or you could lose your soul in the void.

>A ship carrying someone on their first FTL hop on the other hand, is practically guaranteed to have something go horrifically wrong.
I'd alter this one, otherwise nobody would go FTL

Adding to this:

>All spacers know Shepherd's Prayer by heart.

Ah, St. Danni, patron of engineers (and giant zero-gee tits)

Still absolutely barbaric.

Now for some more lewd ones.

-Managing to masturbate in a spacesuit will make you feel more at ease with it, and will 'break it in' to be less uncomfortable.

-If you have sex with someone in space, and a child is conceived, they are guaranteed to work in space. An alternate version has it that them NOT working in space will bring them bad luck.

-Doing sexual things with a member of an alien species is not a bad thing, unless it happens while leaving their homeworld.

-Sex in zero g will make your subsequent few sexual encounters really awful. (This stems from the widespread misconception that 0G sex is great, which it mostly is really not.)

-If you pull a muscle while trying to do a spacers kiss (pressing your lips against the helmet and pressing your helmets together) you're destined to have a great relationship.

-Seeing more than one moon rise at the same time over the horizon of any planet will mean a small streak of good luck with your sexual endeavors.

-Hyper-space means hyper sex. Shortly before and after a hyperspace jump, or before and after engaging your warp drive, people are more horny.

I really want to use all these Spacer superstitions in a SWN game, if I could get my players on board it'd be sick. I'm even considering having a tape of Carmen Miranda's Ghost on their (pre-owned) ship

It should be noted that zero-g sex poses some problems for those spacers with unaugmented dicks. As my old bosun put it "ye cannae get it up without g's lad"

"Dear Lord, please don't let me fuck this up." ?

Supposedly he never actually said that. Or at the very least he doesn't remember saying it.

Some more related to cadets:

-If someone doesn't get sick during their first spaceflight, it WILL come later.

-If you didn't do your first spaceflight before you passed your full-maturity test / age of majority, you can only be really great or really shit with spacecraft. Nothing in between.

-Clenching your eyes shut during your first launch or reentry for too long means your career progress will be very slow.

-"Bang your head, lie awake in bed" Meaning that if you bang your head on something before you slept on a new ship for the first time, you'll be plagued by insomnia while on that ship.

-A hazing ritual for the first time someone is on a mission related EVA, you have to pass a tool to someone else and catch it again by letting it float between you without it being attached to either of you.
If the tool floats off, the only way to avoid bad luck is to admit to your failure and get harshly reprimanded for doing a forbidden hazing thing.

-The first person in a group of cadets to resort to using the waste management system of their spacesuit on EVA instead of going before or holding it, is henceforth known as the space-baby, until they dress up like a baby and walk around the spaceship once.

-"No amount of training prepares for meteorites raining."
The first time your ship gets into a shower of micrometeorites you're definitely going to fuck something up.

-"Your first spacesuit is always average." You're unlikely to find much more or much less comfortable spacesuits than the first one you ever wore.

-Getting a plantside spacesuit dirty enough that it has to be cleaned on the first time wearing it means you're going to have bad luck for a full year of the planet you're on.

-Spotting broken equipment, a new cadet, and a pet on the same day will bring you immense good luck.

-"No one is born for EVA"
Your first time on EVA in space is going to suck no matter what.

>heartbone

hold on.. were was this from again?

Its the only part of the ship that NEVER gets replaced right?

I have a few.

-The 'tinking' you hear from the craft after you break orbit isn't the hull of the ship cooling, it is the souls of all those lost in EVA around the world begging to be let back in.

-Ships have souls. No spacer doubts that. They can get angry and they remember. Never insult a ship you are currently standing inside of, or it will turn on you in an emergency.

-On a similar note to the last two; before leaving your ship in a shuttle or for EVA, you must always touch the inside of the hull near the airlock leading out. This is so the ship will remember who you are when you return, and will let you back in.

-Selling an old ship is like betraying your wife. Because of this old ships with old captains are like a marriage, neither will ever retire. They choose to always fly together until one of them dies.

-If you are ever forced to fly through a dust cloud far away from a world, that dinner the entire crew toasts to Sam Jones. Saint Jones, as he is called by the more religious, saved his ship by preforming an EVA at 3/4C to fix a damaged drive before hard radiation sand blasted his suit apart. His soul will watch over ships in dust clouds, but only those that remember him.

who, uh
what is the source on this?

THought we covered that with:
>the captain and the chief engineer can insult their ship, so long as it's all in good fun. They can expect the ship to reciprocate in kind with a few pranks of it's own

pic unrelated

>Sam Jones

did we post the song already?

dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2822436/The-superstitions-space-travel-revealed-Fear-number-13-peeing-tyres-tapping-Snoopy-s-nose-bizarre-rituals.html

Right, because you can insult your wife, but no one else can, even if jokingly.

If we did I missed it. I was wondering if anyone would get the reference.

And some more related to celestial bodies

-If the stellar activity during high activity part of the cycle is exceptionally low, cosmic radiation will be exceptionally high.

-If any of the inner rocky planets is hit by a coronal mass ejection directly, neither of them is going to be hit until the planet in question completed a full orbit.

-The second planet of any star system is always connected to beauty, á la venus.

-Icy moons of gas giants are a great place for any outpost or colony. If the place is not otherwise uninhabitable, these places will prosper disproportionately.

-Some cultures consider seeing all celestial bodies in a system at the same time to be extremely good luck, while some consider it to be extremely bad luck.

-Having fish or birds on the spacecraft will help landing on water or floating platforms. Fish and birds are interchangeable.

-Pictures, holographs, paintings, or models of planets or landmarks on them should be firmly secured, even if a ship has inertial dampeners, because one of those falling down is a bad omen. The details of what the bad thing is differ, but it mostly involves getting lost.

-If you trade with the outer planets without checking prices on the inner planets, and move inwards, you're going to find a better offers for the thing you were trading.

-The planet first colonized in a system is always going to be the most corrupt one.

-Being in orbit around mercury or at a similar distance from a star is damaging to your eyesight despite the filters in the windows.

-Every time a ship enters the shadow of a planet internal systems are more likely to fail (heat shunt, life support, computers). In direct sunlight it's outer systems (engines, solars, hull, weapons).

-Stepping foot on every moon of Jupiter and Saturn will give you good luck in the Sol system.

-Contrary to their names phobos and deimos are great places to park your ship.

-You can hear sounds from the ground in the never-sunny craters on the Moon.

youtube.com/watch?v=IRsVJezFRi4

all true spacers know the story.

Condemned ships due to their crews afflicted with space madness are almost never refurbished. This is believed that the souls of the dead will torment the crew to relive their final hours. As such, any spacer worth their boots will never ever fly in a salvaged condemned vessel on their first run.

Those are really cool, and I have some more.
-There is nowhere for bad mojo to escape out in The Black. Because of this two crew members that have a problem with each other must settle it planet or station side before they will be allowed back on.

-Related to the previous, the souls of the dead can not leave a ship until after it lands. If someone dies you don't hold their final funeral until after a ship makes ground (or their body makes ground, if the ship can not land).

-Related to that, Because all sentient creatures have souls, and it is often difficult to determine what is sentient and what is not, any alien creature brought on board will always be exceptionally well treated by the crew. No one wants an angry ghost wandering their ducts and halls.

And now for some more "veteran" or stronger superstition things.

-If new cadets are on your ship and they abandon some hazing ritual without an emergency, the ship is going to have bad luck, but not the cadets.

-Never eat sweet things on the first day on a ship. It symbolizes prosperity and comfort, and by eating it away you take it from the ship.

-The captain should never offer or start a card game with the crew, because he would by symbolically playing with their fortunes.

-The jump-/hyperdrives spinning up produce noise that has the voices of the past and the future crews of the ship in it. If the noise is particularly shrill, something horrible has occurred or will occur.

-If the airlock outer door is closed during EVA the crew-members on EVA are supposed to announce their readiness for airlock procedure. If the crew inside fail to acknowledge before the airlock opens, this is a bad sign and means something will be not right with the crew inside. If the EVA team fail to announce this before the airlock opens, that's also a bad sign and means something will not be right with the EVA team.

-Do not write your name on any part of the ship unless you are ready to go down with it.

-The ship's cat barfing a furball onto anything but the floor means that that piece of equipment will break unless checked out.

-A very smooth reentry means very bad or very good news arriving planetside.

-If a captain has spent enough time on a ship his body and the ships systems will be in synch. If the captain feels sick, something will go wrong with the ship.

-Retrograde approaches of the inner star-system are harder to detect.

-Before boarding or salvaging a wreckage drink some wine to the wreckage and its crew to ward off their spirits.

-Before taking salvage on board, put a bit of dust into the airlock/hangar so that the spirits of anyone possibly deceased connected to the salvage may stick to that instead.

(You)
And now for some more "veteran" or stronger superstition things.

-If new cadets are on your ship and they abandon some hazing ritual without an emergency, the ship is going to have bad luck, but not the cadets.

-Never eat sweet things on the first day on a ship. It symbolizes prosperity and comfort, and by eating it away you take it from the ship.

-The captain should never offer or start a card game with the crew, because he would by symbolically playing with their fortunes.

-The jump-/hyperdrives spinning up produce noise that has the voices of the past and the future crews of the ship in it. If the noise is particularly shrill, something horrible has occurred or will occur.

-If the airlock outer door is closed during EVA the EVA team is supposed to announce their readiness for airlock procedure. If the crew inside fail to acknowledge before the airlock opens, this is a bad sign and means something will be not right with the crew inside. If the EVA team fail to announce, that's also a bad sign and means something will not be right with the EVA team.

-Do not write your name on any part of the ship unless you are ready to go down with it.

-The ship's cat barfing a furball onto anything but the floor means that that thing will break unless checked out.

-A very smooth reentry means very bad or very good news arriving planetside.

-If a captain has spent enough time on a ship his body and the ships systems will be in synch. If the captain feels sick, something will go wrong with the ship.

-Retrograde approaches of the inner star-system are harder to detect.

-Before boarding or salvaging a wreckage drink some wine to the wreckage and its crew to ward off their spirits.

-Before taking salvage on board, put a bit of dust into the hangar so that the spirits of anyone possibly deceased connected to the salvage may stick to that instead.

-Don't look at a person and then immediately at the local star without an apology unless you want them to die.

...

No bullets.

The real reason for short range plasma pistols, is bullets ricochet and put holes in the equipment, and everyone is terrified of taking out the life support or making a hull breach.

Of course, pirates are less paranoid about such things when they're not aboard their own ship, if they have space suits and an air supply with them.

The comic is made by a drawfag , there's only 2 pages

Staring woman is a tg original, a dead crewmember on a horror setting spaceship, you can find the sources for both by searching staring wpman on suptg

keep a pet fish. not a gold fish, but rathe a small colony of 5-10. terran minnows are great, and common.
the colony is smarter than you think.

-This particular Nebulae/Asteroid Field is considered as cursed and all captains will avoid it, even if it will extend the duration of the journey

-No ship ou station ever contain the number "13" in it because it will bring bad luck. For example in a cruise ship there won't be a "13" room and in a station there won't be a docking area "13".

-If there is space fauna in your setting : the sight of a particular space beast could be a sign of good luck or on the contrary meaning that something really bad will happen soon.

-It's always good to have someone from this particular planet/colony in your crew, and people will usually be overprotective toward him.

-The use of some words is totally forbidden in favor of a synonym. For example always say engines and not machines.

-Maybe some legendary ship similar to the flying dutchman.

-Never wish "Good Luck" to a captain before a mission/journey, it will on the contrary bring bad luck.

>-Maybe some legendary ship similar to the flying dutchman.

I'm not sure what thread it was in, but there was mention made of a ghost ship colloquially referred to as "The White Lady" by respectful spacers and as "The White Whale" by salvagers and pirates wanting to board her. As I recall, she was described as being a huge vessel with elegant lines, an unusual engine configuration and white hull plating pocked and punctured in places by debris strikes. Her appearances are always heralded by computer glitches and a looped broadcast of DeBussey's "Claire de Lune."

Spacers have no body language and make no gestures when talking. No pointing, shrugging, waving, or anything. You might accidentally touch something important.

The EVA caste gesticulate wildly while speaking, as often their first language is spacer sign language. It's as if they've forgotten that a CME won't fuzz out face-to-face speech.

Always knock on the bulkhead three times when entering. Although this is more of a courtesy.

Burn incense every morning for goodluck. It's also useful for finding leaks.

It's not true until you've checked it three times.

The spirits of computers are slothful. Strike the console frame firmly to wake it up.

Always say goodbye to the crew, or the ship it'self, when leaving it.

As long as you are still tethered to the ship, you haven't left yet.

Never fire the engines until all crew is accounted for.

Rub dirt in your child's face once a day to toughen them up (actually, it's to prevent auto-immune disorders).

Leika guides you to the next world.

It's archived on the second "space superstitions" thread on /suptg//

The story goes that the Lady was originally a vessel with a veteran AI and crew that served as a neutral medical cruiser during various interstellar wars and conflicts, regardless of affiliation, race or stereotypes. It was during one such conflict, that the Lady had taken in the crew of a ship that a nearby warship's captain didn't particularly like, and as such fired a Thermotorpedo into the Lady's side, killing all the crew. The AI of the ship subsequently claimed by grief, Shrieked into the surrounding communication frequencies loud enough that many ship captains died, and then jumped out of system. It later gained the name "Clair" due to the fact that the system the ship currently travels in hears a broadcast of "Clair de Lune", up until they detect the lady sitting at the very edge of sensor contact, and hear faint cries. Upon this contact, the lady usually immediately jumps out of system.