Terminology Outpost

перигийный суперсинхронный переход

perigee supersynchronous transfer

A supersynchronous orbit is any orbit whose apogee (highest point) is higher than the altitude at which geostationary satellites are positioned (around 36,000 km above the Earth).

(Need more information.)

Enumerating alphabetical lists…

Alphabetic enumeration is fairly straightforward in English:

a. This is my first point.
b. This is my second point, etc.

As a rule, such alphabetic lists do not skip letters.

I’ve noticed this is not the case in Russian documents. For example, no Russian alphabetic enumeration I’ve seen to date uses the “Й” character. Nor do many alphabetic lists include the letter “З” (presumably as it is too easily confused with the numeral “3″). A couple of documents I’ve worked on over the years have not included the letter “О” (and the only reason I might venture is its similarity to the numeral “0″).

In cases where a document is split among translators, therefore, it is really important for the project manager to make any such enumeration scheme known to all participants, so that the proper letters can be used in English.

Not doing so makes the editor’s life that much harder, with a concomitant adverse impact on overall project quality.

panneau de commande

control panel

(also heard: panneau de contrôle)

verification vs. validation

These are two different processes, which respectively answer the questions:

Was the job performed correctly?

Was the correct job performed?

There is a difference. Consider the rather extreme example where a fictitious client has a requirement to park a car in a garage, but specifies that, to accomplish that job, a 15-pound turkey must be baked at 350°F until the internal temperature of the bird reaches 180°F. In this case, one can verify the accomplishment of the specified requirement, but one cannot validate the higher-level requirement.

датчик средней темперетуры

bulk temperature sensor

Generally, this is not an “average temperature sensor,” especially when referring to a sensor mounted on the fuel tank of a launch vehicle.

объем недолива топлива

propellant ullage volume

отсек удержание

hold-down bay; hold-down structure

Quite literally, the part of launch vehicle hardware that attaches the LV to the pad.

Not “holding mechanism.”

служебный борт vs. станционный борт

A pair of terms related to the ISS, whose translation is problematical.

In both cases, the борт does not really exist, but if it did, the former term might refer to the “side” of the station (and not a physical location) that has to do with running the station in the sense of housekeeping, while the latter term might refer to the “side” that has to do with the station’s mission per se.

Curiously, when I asked a Russian specialist to explain the difference, I was told that these two terms have more to do with the contractors who developed the systems (Energia and Khrunichev) than with any intrinsic meaning.

заправочная сводка

propellant budget; filling budget

диаграмма тяги

thrust profile