A Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down early March 12, returning a multinational crew after more than six months of the International Space Station.
  • @ptfrdEnglish
    4•6 months ago

    From the official NASA coverage:

    https://www.youtube.com/live/PJAUetG6C2E?t=42m25s “It performed norminal … excuse me … nominal, which basically means normal”.

    I actually genuinely prefer when the SpaceX commentators accidentally say “norminal”, precisely because “nominal” does NOT mean ‘normal’. It’s closer to the opposite.

    If Alice was thinking of buying a car from Bob and I told her “the vehicle I bought from Bob works fine, nominally”, she would rightly take that as a warning.

    If my family member was in space and I heard on the nets “safety systems nominal”, I’d be bricking it!

    AFAICT it’s only the space industry that gets this wrong.