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suicide burn

noun

Etymology

From being an engine burn whose failure results in destruction, thus seemingly requiring "suicidal" confidence or courage to attempt.

Definitions

  1. A method of soft-landing a rocket with a well-timed, high-thrust engine burn starting at…

    A method of soft-landing a rocket with a well-timed, high-thrust engine burn starting at the last possible second, such that it reaches a vertical speed of zero at precisely or almost precisely at the exact moment that it touches the landing pad and the engine shuts down.

  2. An instance of such a landing.

    • A suicide burn is a more efficient method of landing than slowly decelerating over the length of a long descent, as a smaller proportion of the engine's thrust is spent fighting against gravity.

  3. A rocket firing during such a landing.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for suicide burn. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA