Doublespeak

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January 18th, 2025 (Permalink)

21st Century Doublespeak

SpaceX's "Starship" was launched on Thursday for an unmanned test flight1. Here's how SpaceX described in a press release what happened next: "Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly.2"

What, exactly, is a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (RUD)? The verb "disassemble" is the antonym of "assemble", that is, it means the opposite of the verb "assemble": to assemble is to put together and to disassemble is to take apart3. By extension, the word can be used to describe something falling apart rather than being taken apart. "Disassembly" is the corresponding noun referring to the process of taking or falling apart4.

Obviously, the unmanned Starship was not rapidly disassembled in space since there was no one there to do it; rather, it exploded. Explosions are frightening, dangerous events, so SpaceX used "rapid disassembly" as a euphemism for what happened to its spaceship.

This is not the first time that "disassembly" has been used as a euphemism for "explosion": in his 1989 book on doublespeak, William Lutz mentions the use of the phrase "energetic disassembly"5. A similar, later phrase is "unplanned rapid ignition of solid fuel", which shares "rapid" with RUD and "unplanned" instead of "unscheduled"6.

Both "unplanned" and "unscheduled" also serve a euphemistic purpose: what happened to the Starship was unintended and, therefore, an accident. Accidents appear to be frequent subjects of doublespeak as Lutz lists eleven different euphemisms for "accident"7. Rather than calling it an "accident", SpaceX called it "unscheduled" to indicate that it was not intended to blow up. "Unscheduled" as a euphemism for an accident is not unprecedented as the Federal Aviation Administration referred to an airplane crash last century as an "unscheduled contact with the ground"8.

This is not the first occurrence of the entire phrase "rapid unscheduled disassembly", though I could not find any evidence of it prior to this century. Google's Ngram Viewer shows no occurrences before the year 2000, with the number increasing until it peaked in 20199. It's not even the first time that SpaceX has used the phrase, which was apparently two years ago when an earlier version of the Starship also exploded and The New York Times referred to it as a "cosmic level…of euphemism"10.

Thankfully, most of the news headlines reporting the event have not used the euphemism, with many calling it an "explosion" instead11.

Reader Response (1/20/2025) Dennis Fazio e-mails:

You should also consider [RUD] is just a tongue-in-cheek phrase that was used in a meeting once by one of the engineers who sometimes tend to lean toward these kinds of twists of phrase, and it just grew from there to also be used in their press releases. SpaceX is not an outfit that is embarrassed by their failures―in fact they see them as great learning opportunities. So I don't think it is doublespeak for PR purposes, but just an effort to be different and embrace accidents as a part of the process.

I didn't mean to suggest that RUD was entirely serious, and it's clear that it didn't fool many if any reporters. As doublespeak, it's a bit too obvious to be successful. Moreover, The New York Times had already pointed out that it's a "cosmic level" euphemism almost two years ago, when a previous Starship exploded10. That said, a failure can be an opportunity to learn, but it's still a failure. If the Starship is ever to be a manned vehicle, it needs to stop blowing up.

Notes:

  1. Eric Lagatta, "Despite mid-air explosion after launch, it's not over for SpaceX's Starship", USA Today, 1/17/2025.
  2. "Starship's Seventh Flight Test", SpaceX, 1/16/2025.
  3. "Disassemble", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 1/17/2025.
  4. "Disassembly", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 1/17/2025.
  5. William Lutz, Doublespeak: From "Revenue Enhancement" to "Terminal Living", How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You (1989), pp. 20 & 258.
  6. William Lutz, Doublespeak Defined: Cut Through the Bull**** and Get the Point (1999), p. 28.
  7. Ibid., p. 1.
  8. Ibid., p. 4.
  9. "rapid unscheduled disassembly", Google Ngram Viewer, accessed: 1/17/2025.
  10. Daniel Victor & Kenneth Chang, "Starship Exploded, but SpaceX Had Reason to Pop Champagne Anyway", The New York Times, 4/20/2023.
  11. For example: Jackie Wattles & Kia Fatahi, "Regulators are investigating reports of property damage from SpaceX Starship's explosion", CNN, 1/18/2025.
January 8th, 2025 (Permalink)

How to Solve a Problem: Reasoning by Cases

To get the most out of this entry, try the following puzzle. This is a moderately difficult puzzle of its type, so don't get discouraged too easily. After you've tried the puzzle, check out my comments below.

Puzzle: Too Many Suspects

Instructions: Victor Timm was not a popular man; no one mourned him when he died. Timm made his living as a blackmailer and his only "friends", as he called them, were those he blackmailed. However, Timm did have a sense of humor, however mordant. On the evening of his demise, which happened to be his birthday, he invited all five of his current "friends" to dine with him. Each of the five took him up on the invitation only because they feared not to. Timm's practical joke was the biggest, and also the last, mistake of his life. At the end of the evening, he was dead, stabbed multiple times by the very knife he had used to carve the roast he had served.

Detective David Davidson was baffled. All five of Timm's dining companions had means, motive, and opportunity. Means: the carving knife; motive: blackmail; opportunity: presence in the house when and where Timm died. Any one of the five could have killed Timm, and perhaps all had done so, or some combination of two or more. How was he supposed to prove whodunnit?

Of course, Davidson interrogated each of the suspects separately, but none had confessed or implicated any of the other four. However, he did determine six facts about the crime. To protect the innocent, I will refer to the five suspects as: Mr. A, Mrs. B, Mr. C, Ms. D, and Mr. E.

  1. Ms. D or Mr. E is guilty of stabbing Timm.
  2. Either Mrs. B or Mr. C are guilty, but not both.
  3. If Mr. A stabbed Timm then so did Mrs. B.
  4. Mr. E is guilty only if Mr. A is too.
  5. Ms. D stabbed Timm if but only if Mr. C is guilty.
  6. If Ms. D did not stab Timm then neither did Mr. E.

Can you help Detective Davidson solve the mystery? Which of the suspects stabbed Timm?

Comments: In the previous entry in this series on problem-solving*, I warned against making false assumptions. However, I also explained that it was sometimes useful to make assumptions, and reasoning by cases is an example. Reasoning by cases is a way of dividing and conquering―see entry six in this series―since it divides a problem into two or more sub-problems, each of which is simpler and easier to solve than the problem as a whole. Moreover, in reasoning by cases, we make a different assumption for each case, giving us additional information for solving it.

Reasoning by cases is also a way of solving a problem by elimination―see entry three in this series―because it breaks a problem down into two or more cases, and then eliminates those cases that cannot be true. So, in the above puzzle solution, the first case was eliminated because it led to a contradiction, which meant that the second case had to be the truth.

To reason by cases, examine the problem to be solved to see if it can be broken down into cases. Specifically, look for disjunctions among the clues, such as the first two clues in the puzzle above. There are two types of disjunction to be on the lookout for: a weak or inclusive and a strong or exclusive disjunction. A weak/inclusive disjunction is one that says at least one of the cases is true, but more than one may be true; in contrast, a strong/exclusive disjunction says that exactly one of the cases is true. The first clue, above, is a weak disjunction and the second is a strong one.

When reasoning by cases, strong disjunctions are better than weak ones, so if you have a choice between using a strong or a weak disjunction to establish cases, choose the strong one. For instance, in the above puzzle, the first clue is a weak disjunction and the second a strong one. The puzzle can be solved using the first clue to establish the cases, but the cases are a bit harder to solve than those arising from the second clue.

It's not just explicit disjunctions that can be used to break a problem down into cases; in fact, each one of the six clues in the above puzzle can be so used, but this is an advanced topic for another time.

* Previous entries in the "How to Solve a Problem" series:

  1. Contraction, 4/6/2023
  2. Think Backwards, 5/5/2023
  3. Solving a Problem by Elimination, 6/20/2023
  4. Climbing Up that Hill, 7/5/2023
  5. Backtracking, 8/14/2023
  6. Divide and Conquer, 9/11/2023
  7. Don't Make an Ass of U and Me, 12/6/2024

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