Space

Pet Peeve

9 Comments

Note to journalists covering the current Shuttle mission to ISS: solar arrays are not “wings.” Even if PAO says they are. It’s OK to be smarter than PAO. (Not to imply that I know that they are — I’m just guessing where they picked up the false term).

9 thoughts on “Pet Peeve”

  1. “West Wing”

    And that’s a structure that doesn’t remotely look like a flight article, attached to a building that doesn’t remotely look aerodynamic.

    I predict you lose this fight.

    They look like wings, they’ll be called wings.

    I see your point, but you’re going to lose.

  2. It’s not just PAO, Rand.

    NASA internally refers to the solar arrays as SAWs (solar array wings).

  3. Nemo, I think, has the right of it.

    While they are nothing like lift-generating wings, they are more than a little wing-shaped, and the term is – assuming nobody gets the idea that they’re structural, lift-generating bodies – accurate in normal use.

  5. At Lockheed we regularly refer to solar array wings in the satellite context. It’s kind of a natural extension of terminology.

  6. Rand, you winged that one at the PAOs, but they weren’t even winged, and as I’m sure you’d agree, at least some of the journalists aren’t just winging it.

    Looking over the long list of uses for the word at “dictionary.reference.com/browse/wing”, I was surprised to learn that in the UK, the word also refers to a wheeled vehicle’s fender.

  7. I’m guessing the previous label, “solar array roller up thingies”, didn’t quiet roll off the tongue so well.

    Which makes me thing how freakin’ awesome the space station would look if the solar arrays did in fact look like giant dragon wings.

  8. I like it, Josh. Why not make the whole station look like a dragon? I guess it would have to be a female dragon, though, because then the shuttle comes up — another thing with wings, only real flying ones this time — and…er….mates with the station.

  9. “I guess it would have to be a female dragon, though, because then the shuttle comes up — another thing with wings, only real flying ones this time — and…er….mates with the station.”

    Could go either way, since the shuttle uses an androgynous docking mechanism…

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