I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing inherently difficult in the basics of rocket science and rocket engineering. Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land at my neighbour's backyard.
Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
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Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#12I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing inherently difficult in the basics of rocket science and rocket engineering. Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land at my neighbour's backyard.
Most of common phrases don't make much sense when taken literally.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#13The rocket always lands as predicted? He didn't pay much attention to the Space Shuttle accidents, did he? Perhaps he's referring to ballistics. Rocket science generally refers to designing the rockets, which to this day sometimes blow up, lose engines, spiral off course, and suffer various other catastrophes.
They forgot a comma - "The rocket always lands, as predicted."
They might blow up, but they always land.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#14I never understood this idiom; to me, 'rocket science' seems to be a fairly well understood issue compared to i.e. the (human) brain.
Rocket science seems simple today, by comparison of other more-complicated technologies. Using computer modeling and calculation, we can accurately predict probable trajectories in which an object will travel.
But it wasn't always this way. For a long time, we were trying to figure out how to measure the speed of gravity with blackboards and pocket-watches. Figuring out "who likes cake vs who likes pie" seems simple, yet we still wrangle with it.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#15I never understood this idiom; to me, 'rocket science' seems to be a fairly well understood issue compared to i.e. the (human) brain.
There are similar idioms about brain surgery and brain surgeons. It's been around for a while, since the time when rockets did blow up with a bit more regularity. Now it's just a thing people say without considering whether it's an accurate expression or not.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#16I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing inherently difficult in the basics of rocket science and rocket engineering. Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land at my neighbour's backyard.
You can't compare toy rockets with real rockets any more than you can compare toy trains with real trains.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#17I never understood this idiom; to me, 'rocket science' seems to be a fairly well understood issue compared to i.e. the (human) brain.
There are similar idioms about brain surgery and brain surgeons. It's been around for a while, since the time when rockets did blow up with a bit more regularity. Now it's just a thing people say without considering whether it's an accurate expression or not.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#18I've always preferred to use "rocket surgery".
ThinkGeek have a relevant t-shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ea8c/
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#19I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing inherently difficult in the basics of rocket science and rocket engineering. Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land at my neighbour's backyard.
That's like saying that electrical engineering is trivial because you used an arduino once and it wasn't so hard.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#20I believe the author of the article misses the mark on many situations where the expression is used.
In the technical domain, when my colleagues or I use the phrase, it's usually in disdainful reference to an inane request or situation where someone can't accomplish or learn a very basic task that they should know due to their lack of effort or attitude.
Example 1: "The project manager needs help in formatting worksheets in Excel. It's not rocket science."
Example 2: "The client's network admin can't figure out how to open a file with a .zip extension. It's not rocket science."