International Space Station..

Plasma ejecting from sun on November 7, 2024

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.)

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster

Credits: Blake Estes, Christian Sasse

Life cycle of our Sun, from beginning to end~

Young Stars, Dark Nebulae Image Credit & Copyright: Long Xin

Star cluster NGC 346 with mosaic imagery from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, JWST, XMM-Newton X-Ray Observatory, and the New Technology Telescope.

Pastel clouds and ocean from the ISS ©

Sharp Nebula Shot!