Euphemism of the day - The flight was "interrupted" after the launch

[Zootonius]

My favorite euphemism is vigorous oxidation, meaning a fire.

 

[AlexBailey]

I wonder if it was due to suboptimal quality control or performance limiting design factors.

 

[Britva415]

The exact line from USA Today is:

I remember the "unscheduled disassembly" of a SpaceX rocket after launch a year or two ago. Only that didn't come from a news copy desk, it came from the SpaceX spokesflacks themselves.

 

[Duleigh]

I remember the "unscheduled disassembly" of a SpaceX rocket after launch a year or two ago. Only that didn't come from a news copy desk, it came from the SpaceX spokesflacks themselves.

Let's see if it will hold together today. Launch is scheduled for 9:20 AM EDT

 

[Duleigh]

Just amazing! The largest spaceship ever built is now at orbital altitude!!!

 

[gunhilltrain]

I wonder if it was due to suboptimal quality control or performance limiting design factors.

Every profession has it's own lingo, often euphemistic. Somewhere along the line prison and jail guards became "corrections officers." (Sounds like a group of proofreaders. Inmate slang for them in some places was "screws.") Prisons became correctional institutions and jails detention facilities.

I saw an ad in the subway that said, "Can you imagine yourself as a New York corrections officer?" There's about twelve photos of people in such positions. I think, "Hell no, I'd rather work in a coal mine instead of Riker's Island."

 

[Duleigh]

When an Air Force plane crashes into the ground it's an "Inadvertent contact with an immovable object" shortly before the contact, the air crew will leave the airplane.
This is called "Returning the plane to the tax payers" (That's what they taught me in ejection capsule training)

 

[StillStunned]

Somewhere along the line prison and jail guards became "corrections officers." (Sounds like a group of proofreaders

I have to change my job title on LinkedIn...

 

[cdstefi]

Although I can tell this thread is somewhat piss-takey in nature, from that clip it seems pretty obvious the rocket was starting to veer off vertical and had lost control a few seconds in, and was self-destructed so it'd blow up in the air near the launchpad and not make its way to somewhere it might cause more damage.

 

[AlexBailey]

FWIW, I was told by an insider that Challenger was brought down by a ‘performance limiting design factor’ when the asbestos O-rings were replaced with non-asbestos.

 

[Duleigh]

‘performance limiting design factor’

I like that! *copies phrase* Now if I can find something in my life that I can use that excuse

 

[MillieDynamite]

OrThis thread really hits me in the innuendo. Your in your end O!

 

[AlexBailey]

The vehicle has attained entropy status.

 

[MillieDynamite]

"The rocket terminated the flight after judging that the achievement of its mission would be difficult," company president Masakazu Toyoda said. That's from the recent SpaceX attempted launch by a private company in Japan. The innuendo that the rocket terminated the launch because the mission was hard is laughable. Why didn't they just admit the truth, the damn thing blew the hell up, and we don't get a hint of a clue as to why?

 

[StillStunned]

"The rocket terminated the flight after judging that the achievement of its mission would be difficult," company president Masakazu Toyoda said. That's from the recent SpaceX attempted launch by a private company in Japan. The innuendo that the rocket terminated the launch because the mission was hard is laughable. Why didn't they just admit the truth, the damn thing blew the hell up, and we don't get a hint of a clue as to why?

It makes it sound like the rocket had been talking to Marvin the Paranoid Android, and just given up.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Though today they did get a successful launch. If, at first, you don't succeed, spend a couple of billion more and see what happens.

 

[Bramblethorn]

One of my favourite space-related euphemisms is "lithobraking".

"The rocket terminated the flight after judging that the achievement of its mission would be difficult," company president Masakazu Toyoda said. That's from the recent SpaceX attempted launch by a private company in Japan. The innuendo that the rocket terminated the launch because the mission was hard is laughable. Why didn't they just admit the truth, the damn thing blew the hell up, and we don't get a hint of a clue as to why?

Allowing for some language differences and understatement, I'd interpret that statement as what @cdstefi said: the rocket was veering off course, it was clear the launch had failed, so it was intentionally blown up either by remote command or by some automatic fail-safe process.

This happens quite often. A rocket that loses control for some reason is extremely dangerous. You can't shut off a solid-fuel engine once it's lit, and a rocket built to reach orbit can go a long way from the launch site before hitting the ground and exploding any remaining fuel. Worst case for this particular one, it flies into North Korea and gets interpreted as an attack.

Best mitigation for that is to blow them up in mid-air, letting as much as possible of the energy dissipate in the air rather than on the ground, near the launch site which hopefully is not near populated areas.

 

[8letters]

Allowing for some language differences and understatement, I'd interpret that statement as what @cdstefi said: the rocket was veering off course, it was clear the launch had failed, so it was intentionally blown up either by remote command or by some automatic fail-safe process.

This happens quite often. A rocket that loses control for some reason is extremely dangerous. You can't shut off a solid-fuel engine once it's lit, and a rocket built to reach orbit can go a long way from the launch site before hitting the ground and exploding any remaining fuel. Worst case for this particular one, it flies into North Korea and gets interpreted as an attack.

Best mitigation for that is to blow them up in mid-air, letting as much as possible of the energy dissipate in the air rather than on the ground, near the launch site which hopefully is not near populated areas.

From USA Today:

Why did Space One's Kairos rocket explode?
The small, solid-fuel rocket was designed to self-destruct when it detects errors that could trigger a crash and put people on the ground at risk.

However, it was not immediately clear what caused Wednesday's explosion and company officials have not specified what triggered Kairos to abort the mission so early into its launch.
:
Speaking to reporters at a Wednesday news conference, Space One Director Mamoru Endo declined to specify why company officials believe the rocket triggered its self-destruction after the first-stage engine ignited. An investigation into the malfunction is underway, Masakazu Toyoda, the company’s president, told reporters.

 

[Duleigh]

Euphemism's from the high tech world
When someone called me up and said the system was down and it turned out he put in the wrong data. That was called a PEBKAC issue
PEBKAC = Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. (Also called a Mouse Actuator issue)
For an airplane if the pilot wrote up something completely stupid (Like "Gun won't fire in left turn" on an F-16) It's PEBSAR
PEBSAR = Problem Exists Between Stick And Rudder
Corrective action is R&R Stick Actuator (R&R = remove and replace)

 

[Duleigh]

Though today they did get a successful launch. If, at first, you don't succeed, spend a couple of billion more and see what happens.

They got all mission goals accomplished, now they need to stick the landing
I watched the re-entry of both vehicles. the booster looked off center because not all re-entry engines lit so it went and punched a hole in the ocean, as for StarShip if you watch the video you can see the tiles come flying off as it starts to enter the atmosphere. Switch to gorilla glue and try again.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have to change my job title on LinkedIn...

So which "joint" do you work for? Is it municipal, county, state, or Federal level?

As George Carlin noted, euphemisms usually replace one short, probably one syllable word with something much more complicated.

 

[ElectricBlue]

FWIW, I was told by an insider that Challenger was brought down by a ‘performance limiting design factor’ when the asbestos O-rings were replaced with non-asbestos.

Don't think asbestos had anything to do with it. It was rubber O-rings that got too brittle when it got too cold. They did too many cold launches, but only compared defect events amongst that cluster of launches, and couldn't see a pattern.

It was only when a young graduate said, why don't you compare ALL defects from ALL launches, including the hot weather ones? that it become obvious. Failures only occurred below a certain temperature. You gotta take a wider sample!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Don't think asbestos had anything to do with it. It was rubber O-rings that got too brittle when it got too cold. They did too many cold launches, but only compared defect events amongst that cluster of launches, and couldn't see a pattern.

It was only when a young graduate said, why don't you compare ALL defects from ALL launches, including the hot weather ones? that it become obvious. Failures only occurred below a certain temperature. You gotta take a wider sample!

The issue with the O-rings wasn't that they got brittle as such, but that they were less flexible. They were there to seal a joint in the rocket boosters and prevent hot gases escaping through it, but the cold meant they were less springy and so didn't expand quickly enough to completely plug a gap as the joint shifted under launch stresses. So hot gas blasted through the gap, which then eroded the rings, letting more gas through and eroding them more, etc. etc.

Part of the tragedy is that some folk in NASA knew exactly what had gone wrong, they knew the O-rings weren't safe in cold weather, but risked being fired if they spoke openly. Sally Ride passed a report on to Donald Kutyna, who nudged Richard Feynman (Nobel-winner, independent member of the Commission, bongo drums player) and planted some seeds that got Feynman to rediscover the O-ring problem for himself, and Feynman could then publicise it (which he did very effectively). It was only afterwards that Feynman realised he'd been steered towards that discovery.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/sp...ory-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/

 

[ElectricBlue]

Part of the tragedy is that some folk in NASA knew exactly what had gone wrong, they knew the O-rings weren't safe in cold weather, but risked being fired if they spoke openly. Sally Ride passed a report on to Donald Kutyna, who nudged Richard Feynman (Nobel-winner, independent member of the Commission, bongo drums player) and planted some seeds that got Feynman to rediscover the O-ring problem for himself, and Feynman could then publicise it (which he did very effectively). It was only afterwards that Feynman realised he'd been steered towards that discovery.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/sp...ory-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/

Correct. I had a fascinating book written about the whole thing, which went into the change in mindset that went on - written by a behavioural psychologist from memory - I loaned the book to someone, and no longer have it.

In essence, the engineers were asked to say, "It's not safe to launch" versus "It's safe to launch", which is a complete reversal of the question and of the mindset.

The most fascinating thing for me is that the engineers only deeply investigated those launches where they had detected issues. It wasn't until a young non-engineer came along and said "But you're not looking at EVERY launch, only those that leaked." When you see every launch plotted out on a temperature graph, the problem leaps off the page. Only those launches below a certain temperature showed leaks, but if you can't see the "no problem" high temperature launches, there's no obvious pattern down the bottom of the chart.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Correct. I had a fascinating book written about the whole thing, which went into the change in mindset that went on - written by a behavioural psychologist from memory - I loaned the book to someone, and no longer have it.

In essence, the engineers were asked to say, "It's not safe to launch" versus "It's safe to launch", which is a complete reversal of the question and of the mindset.

The most fascinating thing for me is that the engineers only deeply investigated those launches where they had detected issues. It wasn't until a young non-engineer came along and said "But you're not looking at EVERY launch, only those that leaked." When you see every launch plotted out on a temperature graph, the problem leaps off the page. Only those launches below a certain temperature showed leaks, but if you can't see the "no problem" high temperature launches, there's no obvious pattern down the bottom of the chart.

I guess it's the reverse of this fallacy: