(in order of appearance)
Australia’s most celebrated marsupial scientist, with a specialization in Kangaroo and allied species.
Horse. Highly food motivated. Cunning and inventive, helpful when necessary, but it’s all about getting those oats. Fusion considers themself as Chaotic Good and is frustrated that they only manage to come off as Lawful Good to the humans around them.
The food motivation and overall affability is down to Gurgi in the Book of Three. Also based on the horse and dog Top from the Jules Verne novel Invasion of the Sea.
The Nancy Drew of the piece. Trained as an astronaut, Bender settled near Boca Chica spaceport for its cheap ballistic passenger flights to Kennedy Space Center, where she is often called upon to command missions into outer space. But everyone needs a hobby, so Bender purchased a dilapidated dude ranch and made it her own.
The Rocket Ranch’s large animal veterinarian, and part time electrician.
An animal lover from birth, in their teenage years, Francis volunteered at an animal shelter before persuing a degree (never completed) in Electrical Engineering.
Based on the real life ethologist Temple Grandin, the fictional character of Dr. Marian Lazarus in the excellent 1981 film Outland (who is in turn probably based on the corresponding character in High Noon), Fran Blanche of FranLab (Philadelphia). The Doctor McCoy of the piece.
Frances could care less, these days, about electrical engineering, preferring to manage the Ranch’s horses and other animals, but refuses to allow any licensed contractor onto the Rocket Ranch, because Frances has the Rocket Ranch wired and networked according to specific needs of the entire team, and any outside contractor would only screw it up. Chews a strand of 14 gauge PVC wire insulation instead of a piece of straw.
The chief ranch hand, effectively Bender’s first officer, but day to day reports to Frances since Bender is in space so often. Not a Surfer, Merl’s car broke down outside the ranch during a cross country vision quest, and Merl took it as a sign to stay. Once capped a leaking undersea oil well using nukes, but none of the other characters know that. Based in part on Clancy Brown’s portrayal of Rawhide in “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension (1984). Merl isn’t afraid to ask a simple question that more often than not gets the academics of the team (i.e., almost everybody else) out of a rut and into orthogonal thinking. Like the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Merl’s true identity is shrouded in mystery, mostly because it never occurs to anyone to ask. Has absorbed more science from the people around them than they’ll ever be credited.
Ex students of Frances’ from the latter’s days as a professor at Texas A&M. Varley is post-doc, and Cass is a graduate student, but Varley is an ethologist, and Cass’s skills in genome analysis and population genetics mean that Varley is happy to sit at Cass’s feet for the duration, as Feynman did when he apprenticed himself to biologists. A bit older than Cass, Varley can be overprotective of Cass, as a junior colleague, and bends over backwards to ensure that Cass retains academic priority for any discovery they make together (Hoyle and Burnell).
In the Star Trekky world of the Rocket Ranch, public wildlife management has become a globally managed affair, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has absolute, Gort-like jurisdiction in the protection and conservation of the planet’s natural resources.
Agent Jane is a UNESCO career lifer. In Jane’s career, one learns secrets, not because of reasons of international espionage. Secrecy is a curated resource in the protection of natural areas. Information about a resource may come from non-public sources, and an organization like UNESCO guards tjhe integrity sources with da Vinci Code like discipline. If they don’t, they’ll never be trusted with another secret again.