"Up Goer Five," the cartoon's name for the big moon rocket, is a description of the Saturn V using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. From "the part that falls off first" to the "part that flies down to the other world with two people inside," the illustration's descriptions will amuse ordinary citizens. NASA people, of course, will feel a powerful urge to populate the image with a few good acronyms.
As funny as the cartoon is -- and it is funny -- it does suggest that NASA knew what it was doing when it decided to use precise technical language for its rockets. "Nozzle" may not be the most fun word in the dictionary, but it does seem superior to "fire comes out here."
Of course, it's a long way from "nozzle" to "Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap)," a recent NASA coinage to describe a program to encourage development of new commercial rockets to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. Wonder what XKCD would make of CCiCap?
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