that almost didn't happen

good read

Inside the eight desperate weeks that saved SpaceX from ruin
The company's meteoric rise can be traced to a critical launch from a Pacific isle.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09 ... =synd_digg

Heady days indeed.

Macdoc wrote:

The company's meteoric rise...

Oxymoron alert. Meteors do not rise, FFS.

ah but they do appear to rise in some circumstances .....you may email the author and apologize

f the radiant is a bit below the horizon, then some meteors will be seen going upwards, with their trails pointing back to the radiant.

Some can appear to rise. Yes. Nice try. Second paragraph below the one you're quoting from:

Of course, they're all coming down from the perspective of the Earth as a whole. The "up" and "down" of individual meteor trails is just an effect of perspective as seen from a particular spot.

Meteoric is an adjective describing the appearance of a flaming bit of space debris....It is not directional...only meteorites actually hit the earth .....earth grazers ( I've seen a monster cruise by dripping green fire ) are not going to fall to the earth, they curve through the atmosphere on their way back out to space.

What is an Earth-grazing meteor?

It’s a meteor that moves nearly horizontally through the Earth’s atmosphere, nearly parallel to the earth’s surface. It can come in from space, travel though the Earth’s atmosphere, and then actually escape back into interplanetary space [see a map of the 1860 procession’s ‘ground track’].

good read
https://www.davidreneke.com/great-meteo ... uary-1913/

and that is NOT a trick of perspective.

Many of those fireballs do not reach the planet but pass through the atmosphere and back out.

so there is nothing wrong with the phrase meteoric rise

Macdoc wrote:Meteoric is an adjective describing the appearance of a flaming bit of space debris...

And Meteoric rise is the description of what meteors do not do. Not even the ones that glance off the atmosphere.

Hermit wrote:

Macdoc wrote:Meteoric is an adjective describing the appearance of a flaming bit of space debris...

And Meteoric rise is the description of what meteors do not do. Not even the ones that glance off the atmosphere.

They would if those meteors were formed from shards send flying from the surface of a moon that had been hit from another meteorite.

Animavore wrote:

Hermit wrote:

Macdoc wrote:Meteoric is an adjective describing the appearance of a flaming bit of space debris...

And Meteoric rise is the description of what meteors do not do. Not even the ones that glance off the atmosphere.

They would if those meteors were formed from shards send flying from the surface of a moon that had been hit from another meteorite.

That reminds me of Martian meteorites. A number of meteorites that have landed on earth are actually rocks that have been chipped off Mars by meteorites "rising" on Mars, and flung to our planet. It could be said that they rose from Mars, I suppose, but that is not what most people think of when they say "meteoric rise". I dare say that most people are not even aware of some of the meteors originating from the moon or Mars, and in the end they did fall rather spectacularly. That's how they attracted our notice the first place.

Meteoric refers to speed and not direction. It’s one of those silly english sayings.

felltoearth wrote:Meteoric refers to speed and not direction.

Thank you.

You can have a meteoric descent, like when Pee Wee Herman got caught pleasuring himself in an adult theater. His career dropped like a, well, meteor.

felltoearth wrote:
Meteoric refers to speed and not direction.

not quite..needs an appearance aspect ....a meteoroid is a space particle not in the atmosphere

A meteoroid is a sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere is called a meteor, or colloquially a shooting star or falling star. If a meteoroid reaches the ground and survives impact, then it is called a meteorite.

flaming appearance in an atmosphere and the the vector of an earth grazer is not a "bounce" .....it enters the atmosphere and is partially burned and then exits the atmosphere without hitting the earth ....the vector of that exit is rising in relation to the surface of the earth.

and yeah one of those english sayings...another aspect is implied that it is brief in time.

When someone rises from complete obscurity to headline news overnight it's said to be meteoric because a meteor's rise in apparent magnitude is similarly brief and shiny. Any connection to the trajectories of meteors on the sky is irrelevant.

Good point ...rise in magnitude