vomit comet

vomit comet
 n.— «Officially, NASA’s C-135 was designated the Reduced Gravity Aircraft; unofficially, hapless trainees dubbed it the “vomit comet,” “barf buzzard,” and “weightless wonder.”» —by Roger E. Bilstein in National Aeronautics and Space Administration Orders of Magnitude , 1989. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

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Further reading

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Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...

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