#aerospace

[thererisesaredstar]

Near the Cosmos. Dawn flight by Stanislav Torlopov (1984)

[am--afmil]

A USAF Rockwell B-1B Lancer strategic bomber taking off.

[prokopetz]

To be fair, a lot of goofy-sounding rocketry/aerospace terminology has a legitimate nomenclatural role beyond just being silly euphemisms.

"Unplanned rapid disassembly", for example, exists as the necessary counterpart to planned rapid disassembly: sometimes a rocket is legitimately supposed to fall apart or blow up, so you need a specific term to emphasise that it wasn't supposed to do that.

Similarly, "lithobraking" was coined by analogy with aerobraking (shedding velocity via atmospheric friction) and hydrobraking (shedding velocity by landing in water), and it does have some intentional applications; the Mars Pathfinder probe, for example, was deliberately crashed into the Martian surface while surrounded by giant airbags, and reportedly bounced at least 15 times before coming to rest.

(That said, aerospace engineers absolutely do use these terms humorously as well, because engineers are just Like That.)

[bentbox-co]

[supplyside]

Warthog

[spacefaring-wolf]

I would like to congratulate the Orion capsule for it's transition from great spacecraft to kinda ok boat!

[nocternalrandomness]

Artemis II Flight Plan