On Orbit

[Dan Goncharoff]

A quick look at Google found usages of "on-orbit" back to the 1960s

DanG

On 4/18/2010 1:03 PM, Geoff Nathan wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Geoff Nathan<geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: On Orbit
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> In another part of my life I follow the aerospace industry and can report that the phrase 'on orbit' is very frequent in the major trade journal, _Aviation Week and Space Technology_. I haven't had the opportunity to do the philological research required to find out how old the usage is (I suspect not more than ten-fifteen years) but could consider investigating further if necessary (I don't know how far back I can search archives, or whether I can search for things like that).
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
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> ----- "Dave Wilton"<dave at WILTON.NET>  wrote:
>
>
>> From: "Dave Wilton"<dave at WILTON.NET>
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 10:49:32 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
>> Subject: On Orbit
>>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Dave Wilton<dave at WILTON.NET>
>> Subject:      On Orbit
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>>
>> Catching up on old podcasts this morning, I heard this on the "365
>> Days of
>> Astronomy" podcast from 25 March: "then once on orbit it deploys out
>> into
>> this large, 21-foot mirror."
>>
>> At first I thought it was a slip of the tongue for "in orbit," but
>> then the
>> speaker, an engineer for Ball Aerospace, and the interviewer, a PR
>> flack for
>> the same company, went on using "on orbit" throughout the interview.
>> As in,
>> "has a telescope ever been aligned on orbit?"
>>
>> Full transcript and podcast are here:
>> http://365daysofastronomy.org/2010/03/25/march-25th-the-mirrors-that-make-ja
>> mes-webb/
>>
>> I've no idea how prevalent this usage is or if it is centered in the
>> space
>> industry. A quick googling shows they're not the only ones, but it
>> appears
>> to be far rarer than "in orbit."
>>
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