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There's a really great throwaway joke in the caption of one of the illustrations that accompany the story. In the image captioned "The trajectory of a Falcon 9
by jawns 11y ago
There's a really great throwaway joke in the caption of one of the illustrations that accompany the story.
In the image captioned "The trajectory of a Falcon 9 booster from launch to landing," the caption directs the reader: "Click to vonbraunenate."
I googled "vonbraunenate," and there were only a handful of results aside from this particular article.
So then I googled "von braun," and of course, the first result that came up was the Wikipedia entry for Wernher von Braun.
So what's the connection?
Von Braun was an aerospace engineer who "developed the rockets that launched United States first space satellite and first series of manned lunar missions."
- user24 11y agoI get the connection, I don't get the joke...
- lucian1900 11y agoPhil Plait puts that sort of thing in most of his articles.
- robodale 11y agoI noticed vonbraunenate as well, and assumed it was the name of the flickr account that owned the Falcon 9 trajectory image...but I didn't catch the Von Braun reference until you mentioned it. Good catch!
- arethuza 11y agoVon Braun's biopic was called "I Aim at the Stars" - some wit suggested that it should also have the subtitle "(But Sometimes I Hit London)"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Aim_at_the_Stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Aim_at_the_Stars
- Aelinsaar 11y ago"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department says Wernher Von Braun"
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jccooper 11y agoVon Braun in known for designing ever-larger rockets, culminating in the Saturn V (and continuing on paper). Goes along with "click to enlarge".
- curtis 11y agoPhil Plait has a long history of using phrases like "Click to X" where X is some made up verb. Try this Google search: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22phil+plait%22+%22click+to%22 https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22phil+plait%22+%22cli... In the first few results I see: Click to vonbraunenate Click to embiggen Click to barsoomenate Click to enaurumenate Click to cascadienate Etc.