Operation Rugido Ratón by D.H. Richards

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Lester Curtis
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Operation Rugido Ratón by D.H. Richards

Post by Lester Curtis »

Ah, the triumph of the Third World -- AND socialism -- both at one stroke! Fun little story.

There's a problem with the premise, though, I think: surveillance satellites, as in, ours. They'd have seen all this stuff in preparation WAY long before it was anywhere near to being ready to go. In detail. After all, a rocket capable of launching, uh, eight point fifty-four-plus astronauts (average) is not something that's easily hidden, not to mention the very considerable support and launch facilities, the assembly building big enough to generate its own internal weather, etc., etc. Times one hundred seventeen. You don't just prop a Saturn V up in the middle of a beanfield and light a fuse under it. I'd think the whole island would have been surrounded by the US Navy months before. So, no need to send a guy on the ground posing as a tourista.

I did like the idea of using a laptop with a single operator to control the launch; I'm just not sure that's altogether plausible either, unless the whole launch sequence is largely automated. And what happens in the very likely event that one or more of those launches is held or aborted? There are thousands of details that all have to be perfectly right, after all.

All that aside, how does Cuba get the money for 117 of these -- all at once? Oh, wait -- I know -- cheap labor!

The strangest thing about this story, though, was the careless editing; not what I'd expect from a college professor. Missing words, missing punctuation. "Senior" for "señor". Proofread, sir; first impressions are important.

There was a lot of nicely-thought-out detail in the way the MC carried out his spying. This kind of attention would be very good in a story that had more plausibility.

Keep trying!
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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