Asieneuve

Dominic Flandry commands the escort destroyer, Asieneuve, named after a land mass on the human-colonized planet, Ardeche. Her crew numbers a mere fifty and we are told that:

"...the forecastle could be packed tighter only if the Pauli exclusion principle were repealed..."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Three, p. 397.

Needless to say, this made me google the Pauli exclusion principle. See here. This is the sort of "joke" that gets made in hard sf. In the '60s, I read a novel - title and author's name forgotten - that began by telling us that its hero's hair was receding so fast that you would think his nose was radioactive. Such a remark establishes that we are dealing with characters who are use to dealing with and thinking in terms of scientific processes like radioactivity. (How many novels did we read in early life and subsequently forget both title and author?)

Asieneuve is a Continent-class vessel whereas the scout ship flown by Flandry in the previous novel was Comet class. Have we listed the classes of Terran spacecraft somewhere? (Addendum: We have. See here.)

Flandry enters the bridge and takes over from his non-human executive officer, Rovian of Ferra. Nowadays, we cannot avoid making comparisons with Star Trek.