Malfunctioning Satellite

[Wakannai]

Does it mean "scratching/scraping the satellite with missiles"(instead of hitting the exact potition)?
Or "Grazing" in this sentence has other meaning?

That's it. Grazing means did just enough damage to leave evidence. Like when someone shoots someone with a gun, but it only scratches them on the cheek. Or to use Noob's example, a hurricane goes by, but other than a few broken branches and knocked over trash cans, no other signs a hurricane was there.

I may be wrong, but i was always under the assumption that rockets ,and shuttles, could only make it through the atmosphere (safely) in certain areas. It is sometimes months before another "window" opens. I believe that it has to do with atmospheric conditions.

That's for manned flights and launching and recovery of extremely expensive objects , where they wait for the calmest atmospheric conditions possible. The context of this message is forced re-entry of an obsolete satellite by shooting it out of the sky before its orbit decays enough for a natural re-entry. In this case, safety of the satellite is not what matters, it's the safety of the people below.

[miaumiao]

Stealing, shooting people, hurricanes... I guess we have all been watching too much tv, as our examples only contain calamities.

[Yudan Taiteki]

As you can see Cocoさん, we tend to give new meanings to existing words alot.

This is true in every language.

[miho-sempai]

When learning English, though, the multiple meanings seem to confuse people more. I'm guessing that's because English is supposed to be the "trade" language, or sommat. I don't know, I might be wrong, and probably am. But I have heard that English is one of the hardest languages to learn because it's so odd and makes no sense.

Is that true?

[coco]

Thank you for all your replies, everyone. I appreciate them very much.

sei wrote:
It's just part of the metaphor.

miaumiao wrote:
The borrowed meaning for “window of opportunity” might have originated from an actual window.
Other example of a borrowed meaning, which has not specifically to do with the issue, but offers a broad idea of borrowed meanings.

Yes, this type of expression is very interesting. (Thank you for your detailed explanation, again. It helps me a lot.)

Until I got your kind explanations on this thread, I didn't know "window to opportunity" is translated as 機会の窓. So far, people who use 機会の窓 is still limited, though. (e.g. Medical expert, diplomat, financer.)　

We have a very similar(?) phrase, 社会の窓. The literal meaning is probably "window of society" or "window for society". You might think this is also abstract. We use this phrase with verb that is used for an actual windows. While "window of opportunity" are used as an abstraction, 社会の窓 is not.
If someone say "社会の窓が開いてますよ" to you, you might blush.
"window of opportunity" is much understandable than 社会の窓．

社会の窓 is one of oddest metaphors to me.

ご説明いただき、ありがとうございました。

[sei]

miho-sempai wrote:
When learning English, though, the multiple meanings seem to confuse people more. I'm guessing that's because English is supposed to be the "trade" language, or sommat. I don't know, I might be wrong, and probably am. But I have heard that English is one of the hardest languages to learn because it's so odd and makes no sense.

Is that true?

First, I guess it confuses more people because it is the most studied language in the world (last time I checked at least), so naturally, it would have more people having trouble with it, like they would have with other languages if they studied them. Is this what you meant? I wasn't sure.

And second, I have to totally disagree that it's one of the hardest languages to learn. After you get the hang of it, it becomes surprisingly easy in my opinion. There isn't a grammar point I can recall that is different of many other languages, or simply something that makes it hard compared to others.

Of course, this is only what I've heard and seen throughout my study of it and other languages. I see my colleagues complaining about English a lot (it's a very necessary language for our course since there isn't many materials in Portuguese), but when they're given something to translate, or hear something, they can understand it pretty well (most have studied English for 7 years in school, like myself, some more). So even if they don't like it, they can understand it.

I'm going off topic... sorry about that.

[Tspoonami]

In case this question wasn't answered already (I only skimmed through this thread)...

For the sentence, "I looked it up in/on Dictionary.com," 'on' is the better word to use. This is because, as Sei said, things are put on a website, not in one. So, even though it would be 'in' a dictionary, it is still 'on' the dictionary website.

Interestingly enough, you could even say 'I looked it up at Dictionary.com,' but that is probably less common than 'on.' In fact, you could also use with, from, through, and probably some others (but you can't use 'by'). I don't know why, but this one phrase is just weird like that. Still, your safest bet is on 'on.'

[tsumeshogi]

sei wrote:
"On" sounds better to me, but I can't give a precise explanation to why that is.

Thanks for your input Sei.

Tspoonami wrote:
For the sentence, "I looked it up in/on Dictionary.com," 'on' is the better word to use. This is because, as Sei said, things are put on a website, not in one. So, even though it would be 'in' a dictionary, it is still 'on' the dictionary website.

Thanks for your explanation Tspoonami. It makes sense now.

[distantsmoke]

I may be wrong, but i was always under the assumption that rockets ,and shuttles, could only make it through the atmosphere (safely) in certain areas. It is sometimes months before another "window" opens. I believe that it has to do with atmospheric conditions.

You are not quite correct here. Rockets, shuttles, and other spacecraft generally require clear atmospheric conditions, but only because there is still a good liklihood that something can go very very wrong.

When dealing with space objects, "window open/close" refers to an opportunity to accomplish whatever action you are considering. In space you can't always get there from here (as the saying goes). It's not that it's not physically possible, but it is generally prohibitively expensive.

Not all satellites orbit the earth multiple times a day. And not all orbits are circular. In fact most of them are elliptical to one degree or another.

Sometimes you have multiple windows per day. Sometimes you have multiple windows in a month. Someimes you only have a window once every few months, usually depending on the orbit of the object you are interested in, or the point in space you want to reach. While a point in space is fixed, the earth is constantly in motion, both around the sun and turning on it's axis. So that fixed point in space is not always in a good place to reach in a cost effective manner.

Fuel to move a satellite in orbit is dead weight that has to be pushed up through the atmosphere. The more weight the rocket carries (scientific instruments, fuel, comm equipment), the more fuel the rocket itself has to use to push all that weight "up and out". So satellites typically carry as little fuel as they can get away with. That means the people who "design" launch trajectories and orbits try to use physics to help the process as much as possible.


In this case, where they wanted to shoot down an orbiting object, they needed to take into account how fast that object's orbit was decaying (and it would re-enter the atmosphere without help), the position of the ballistic "shooter" and the position of the target object in it's orbit.

While atmospheric conditions do sometimes affect whether a launch occurs or not, that is more due to our "primitive" capabilities. There is nothing inherent in atmospheric conditions that would prevent a launch.

[Harisenbon]

While interesting, what's with all the necroposts today? :/

[Yudan Taiteki]

IMO distantsmoke has just about used up his newbie points.

[becki_kanou]

It is really annoying, but perhaps she hasn't come back to any of the threads she posted in to notice people complaining? I know on some other boards people don't seem to care about necro-posting at all. Still, she ought to have read the read before posting thinger though.

[ss]

Beckiさん、there's a " ! " button!

[becki_kanou]

SS- I'm not sure what you mean. None of the posts are report-worthy they're just very very necro.

[ss]

Oh ... okay, I see your point, indeed very very very necro.