air-breathing engine: propulsion plant (motor) that acquires oxidizer from the atmosphere, rather than carrying it in tanks on the vehicle (as required by rocket engines)

airlock: chamber enabling people and things to move or be moved between volumes with different pressures; like a lock in a canal, the chamber starts at the pressure that the occupant is moving from, and changes to the pressure being moved to

attitude (of a vehicle): vehicle’s orientation relative to Earth, Sun, or other objects; typically used to describe a desired view, observation target, or heating environment (e.g., a “sun-facing” attitude assures that one side of the vehicle will always be hot, and the other side always cool)

avionics: literally, “aviation electronics”, mostly including commanding and monitoring of systems on aircraft and spacecraft

cargo: reason a vehicle flies; stuff carried by a vehicle from its starting point (ground or on-orbit) to the vehicle’s destination; can include satellites, bulk materials, construction components, or people

cargo container: standard unit in which cargo is installed; container interiors are configured for complex installations, and standard exterior container interfaces are quickly mated to the inside of a cargo vehicle (standard containers are used on ships, conventional aircraft, railroad cars, and trucks)

consumables: stuff that is used up during the course of a mission or over a period of time, and hence must be replaced; includes everything from rocket fuel to pet food to pencils

contract: legal agreement whereby a company (contractor) promises to build something or provide a service to a customer within a defined cost and schedule, and the customer agrees to pay the entire cost when the product is delivered, or partial payments over the course of a long delivery schedule

dirtside: of or referring to Earth, people living there, and things on it

down area: in a rotating space structure, the interior surfaces through which the force due to the rotation (“artificial gravity”) appears to be vertical; conversely, surfaces inside a rotating space structure on which a person could stand or things could be placed, as if they were on the ground

downweight: amount of payload weight carried by a vehicle from orbit to the ground

Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV): vehicle launched only once; typically, it sheds components (stages) during ascent, with only a small portion of the original “stack” delivered to orbit

Extravehicular Activity (EVA): excursion by spacesuited person outside of a vehicle or habitat

fabrication: manufacturing; the process of making, building, and/or assembling

fiber optics: use of glass strands to transmit light representing electronic signals; can replace copper wire with less weight and expense, and greater reliability, but cannot transmit power

fines: tiny particles of lunar, Martian, or other extraterrestrial dirt; typically called “dust”

GEO: geosynchronous Earth orbit; objects in 22,300 mile orbits rotate around the Earth at the same rate that the Earth turns on its axis; when located above the Equator, these objects appear to be stationary in Earth’s sky

hypersonic flight: flight through an atmosphere at greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) for that atmosphere

launch vehicle: spacecraft capable of launching or flying through an atmosphere (e.g., Earth’s) in order to get into space and achieve orbit

LEO: low Earth orbit; orbital locations above Earth’s atmosphere and below the Van Allen radiation belts

libration points, or L1, L2, L3, L4, L5: in orbital mechanics, when one large body (e.g., the Moon) is in orbit around another large body (e.g., Earth), there are five points in orbits around the larger body where gravitational forces balance out to enable satellites to be placed where they could not stay if the smaller of the large bodies were not present (also called Lagrangian points, for Joseph Lagrange, the mathematician who developed the theory that predicts their existence)

low-g: acceleration environment with less than the acceleration due to gravity on Earth’s surfacemass driver: device that electromagnetically accelerates small objects to very high velocities; can be utilized for efficiently launching material from airless surfaces

micro-g: accurate description of “weightlessness”, the condition experienced in space when forces balance out and objects seem to “float”; true “zero-g” is theoretically not possible, because there are always tiny forces operating on all objects

on-orbit: in space, in an orbit; usually refers to an orbit around Earth

orbit: path assumed by an object in space, due to balancing or “canceling out” of accelerations due to gravity and rotation; usually the elliptical path of a small body (e.g., satellite) around a very large body (e.g., planet, moon, or star)

outweight: amount of payload weight carried by a vehicle from Earth’s vicinity outbound to another location in the solar system

overhead: the part of a budget not considered cost of work directly on a project, but charged to the customer as part of the hourly cost for direct work (i.e., a contractor is paid for each hour an engineer works on tasks directly related to the project; the customer is billed a cost for the engineer’s hours that is greater than the salary paid to the engineer; the difference pays for computers, facility upkeep, janitors, utilities, and other costs needed to support the engineer’s work)

payload: literally, “paying load”; cargo carried by a vehicle, for which a fee is paid in exchange for moving the cargo to its destination

payload capability: weight of payload(s) that a launch vehicle is capable of carrying to orbit

payload integration: process of safely stowing a payload (usually a satellite or complex device) on a launch vehicle and providing services (including electrical power, avionics, and thermal control) that enable the payload to survive the flight and accomplish its purpose; includes design of services, analysis of payload’s ability to survive environments it will experience, and installation in the vehicle

profit: difference between the price charged by a contractor for providing a product, and the actual cost the contractor incurs to create the product

proposal: document prepared by a company or other entity, to convince a customer to select the entity to provide a certain product; it describes the company’s plan for providing the product, and explains why the customer can be confident that the company has a superior design and will produce it according to the customer’s requirements and within the described cost and schedule

rectenna: receiving antenna, converts directed microwave energy (e.g., from an SPS) to electric power

Request for Proposal (RFP): document prepared by a customer, which describes features of a product they want a contractor to produce

requirements: features a customer requests to be included in the design of a desired product

returnweight: amount of payload weight carried by a vehicle to Earth’s vicinity inbound from another location in the solar system

Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV): launch vehicle that returns from its missions intact, and is designed to be maintained after flight and fly repeated missions

satellite: any object in orbit around another object; usually refers to human-made devices in orbit around large natural bodies (i.e., planets, moons, stars)

shirtsleeve: environment in a vehicle or habitat enabling humans to operate without protective gear

Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO): launch vehicle that ascends from ground to orbit without staging, or shedding of components during ascent; such vehicles contain all fuels and oxidizer they require in tanks inside their structures, and return to the ground with tanks intact (the amount of oxidizer onboard can be reduced through use of air-breathing engines during flight in the atmosphere)

solar panel: device that converts sunlight into electrical power

Solar Power Satellite (SPS): a satellite, usually very large, consisting mostly of large arrays of solar panels producing electrical power that can be converted (usually to microwave energy) and transmitted to users in other locations

solar sail: a surface, usually very large and lightweight, that makes use of pressure due to light or solar wind for propulsion

spacer: of or referring to people who live in space

spacesuit: garment providing pressure, breathing air, fluids and nutrients, waste removal, and protection from the space environment, enabling a human to move and operate on EVA

SPS: see “Solar Power Satellite”

SSTO: see “Single Stage to Orbit”

station-keeping: use of small rockets, solar sails, or other propulsion to prevent satellites from drifting out of their desired orbital locations

terraforming: process of making a planet more Earth-like, i.e., habitable by humans

upweight: amount of payload weight carried by a launch vehicle to orbit

Van Allen radiation belts: bands of radiation trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, which both absorb ambient deep-space radiation and provide protection for Earth’s surface, and are a hazard for satellites and humans operating within them

zero-g: see “micro-g”