Today’s Shipyard Sunday post covers the survey cutter IFS Agassiz. The Agassiz is a work-in-progress project, but she’s looking pretty sharp so far, so I figured that I’d share a render.
Science fiction is replete with stories the involve various forms of space weather: ion storms, plasma storms, and the like. I figure if in the modern day we have US Air Force’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (Hurricane Hunters) flying WC-130’s into hurricanes, then in distant future there’d have to daring crew flying their starships into the treacherous maws of the ion storms menacing the space lanes.
The ship takes her name from the USS Agassiz, a United States Coastal Survey ship that served with the Union Navy during the Civil War, and the USCGC Agassiz. The ship’s motto loosely translates to “Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly unto heaven” (William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2), which seemed to me like a good motto for a science ship.