What to call space soldiers?

Call them Vikings? Crusaders? Paladins? Honestly Grunts, Commandos, or Marines would probably be the closest translation when accounting for language-drift. At some point, calling them space-marines might be redundant because putting one on a water-vessel might be considered quaint unless that's the tech-level they're stuck with once they've been dropped.
 
What's wrong with just soldiers, I know marines can get a little twitchy about being called soldiers but that's just because they want to make it clear they are not army. A person in uniform carrying weapons to defend their society is a soldier no matter the theatre they serve.
 
Space Balls, because going around the galaxy exterminating all sorts of heathen creatures requires really big... helmets.
Now that I said this, for some reason I cannot take off my mind the epic image of Imperial Space Marines fighting the forces of the Space Ball regime. We need an illustrator to paint this, urgently.

On a more serious tone, if humanity is able to develop not just proper space faring tech, but even transmedium vehicles, terms like "marine" or "airmen" won't make any sense. And I suspect the armies of the future won't have much dependency of regular soldiers, they'll replace them with much cheaper and effective AI robots or drone swarms, as they're planning to do already. At most, you'll get highly specialized commandos that probably they'll be called just that or some other variation. In such scenario, the only humans working in the military will be for the most part technicians, specialists and, of course, officers. In fact, this would be an ideal time for those who enjoy real time strategy games, since that could kickstart a career into being a "drone strategist" or something like that.
 
Eduardo Letavia said:
Space Balls, because going around the galaxy exterminating all sorts of heathen creatures requires really big... helmets.
Now that I said this, for some reason I cannot take off my mind the epic image of Imperial Space Marines fighting the forces of the Space Ball regime. We need an illustrator to paint this, urgently.

On a more serious tone, if humanity is able to develop not just proper space faring tech, but even transmedium vehicles, terms like "marine" or "airmen" won't make any sense. And I suspect the armies of the future won't have much dependency of regular soldiers, they'll replace them with much cheaper and effective AI robots or drone swarms, as they're planning to do already. At most, you'll get highly specialized commandos that probably they'll be called just that or some other variation. In such scenario, the only humans working in the military will be for the most part technicians, specialists and, of course, officers. In fact, this would be an ideal time for those who enjoy real time strategy games, since that could kickstart a career into being a "drone strategist" or something like that.
Click to expand...
"Spacemen".
 
I agree that, for the foreseeable, in-space military operations will be hugely dominated by technicians on the ground remote-controlling machines in space. Knowing a few forces people they'll probably get a name like 'desk Jedi' in common use. But there will probably still be a need for specialists doing soldiering jobs relating to space operations - e.g. protecting launch sites and communications antenna (or disabling the enemy's), retrieving space related hardware or personnel from at risk areas, etc etc. The best analogy I can think of for that is the RAF regiment, who are a corps of around 2000 infantry soldiers, trained and employed by the RAF to do things like protect airfields and rescue downed air crew - as the RAF has its own interests in space operations they may well do space-related tasks already. They get called rock apes by the rest of the RAF. I have heard that the Royal Marines have a less printable name for them.

So I suggest that in the near future the US Space Force and other such organisations might have a similar infantry organisation, and that any far future in-space human fighting forces might grow out of that. That would make them the USSF Regiment, although perhaps USSF Guard, or USSF Troopers would work better. In any case, my suggestions for what the rest of the military would call them would be something like asteroid apes, meteor monkeys, space apes, or space monkeys.
 
Is this a Sci-Fi question or about real Space we may be occupying in a few hundred years? How would a 'trooper' operate in Space? I can see the use on a planet surface or within a Space hotel.
 
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