"We developed already, before the first servicing mission, this has been further developed on the second servicing mission and we refined it this time, all the terminology"
About this Quote
The sentence lands with the unglamorous thud of real space work: iteration, revision, and the quiet tyranny of getting the words right. Claude Nicollier isn’t reaching for poetry; he’s giving you the behind-the-scenes cadence of an astronaut-engineer culture where progress isn’t a single heroic breakthrough but a long chain of tweaks across missions. The repetition - “developed… further developed… refined” - is almost comically procedural, a verbal mirror of how aerospace actually advances: by incremental improvements that only look boring when they’re successful.
The key tell is “all the terminology.” In NASA’s world, terminology isn’t semantics; it’s safety. Servicing missions (read: high-stakes repairs in orbit, like the Hubble missions) are choreography in a hostile environment, and choreography runs on shared language. If two people picture different actions when they hear the same phrase, you don’t just get confusion - you get a damaged instrument, a wasted EVA, or a dead astronaut. Nicollier’s intent is pragmatic: describe how they built a common operational vocabulary over multiple flights.
The subtext is institutional memory being forged in real time. Early missions reveal the gaps; later missions standardize what worked; “this time” suggests the present flight is the payoff, where lessons learned have been translated into a tighter lexicon. It’s also a subtle demystification of astronautics. The frontier isn’t conquered by swagger but by meetings, checklists, and language that has been beaten into precision. That’s not less heroic; it’s the adult version of heroism.
The key tell is “all the terminology.” In NASA’s world, terminology isn’t semantics; it’s safety. Servicing missions (read: high-stakes repairs in orbit, like the Hubble missions) are choreography in a hostile environment, and choreography runs on shared language. If two people picture different actions when they hear the same phrase, you don’t just get confusion - you get a damaged instrument, a wasted EVA, or a dead astronaut. Nicollier’s intent is pragmatic: describe how they built a common operational vocabulary over multiple flights.
The subtext is institutional memory being forged in real time. Early missions reveal the gaps; later missions standardize what worked; “this time” suggests the present flight is the payoff, where lessons learned have been translated into a tighter lexicon. It’s also a subtle demystification of astronautics. The frontier isn’t conquered by swagger but by meetings, checklists, and language that has been beaten into precision. That’s not less heroic; it’s the adult version of heroism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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