steely-eyed missile man
/ˈstiliˌaɪd ˈmɪs(ə)l ˌmæn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.77 in modern English
31
Scrabble Score
20
Letters
2
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The "hold" in the countdown of a rocket firing has a long and infamous history. It doubtless is as old as the "countdown" itself. We Brevardians have seen thousands upon thousands of pictures of countdowns in progress, of green lights flashing, green buttons being pushed, fuming LOX [liquid oxygen] boiling off, steely-eyed missile men battening hatches and astronauts climbing aboard."
- "Among the men in the Canaveral blockhouse and the Houston control room, there was no greater tribute a controller could be paid than to describe him, in the rough poetry of the rocketry community, as a "steely-eyed missile man." There weren't many steely-eyed missile men in the nasa family. [Wernher] Von Braun was certainly one, [Christopher Columbus] Kraft was certainly one, [Gene] Kranz was probably one too. John Aaron, a twenty-seven-year-old wunderkind from Oklahoma, had recently become one as well."
- "At first glance, the stolid engineers and impassive pilots of the Apollo program weren't colorful movie characters. As [Ron] Howard [director of Apollo 13 (1995)] got to know the stoic astronauts and "steely-eyed missile men" of Mission Control, he saw their sense of humor, their wilder sides and the doubts they carry like everyone else."
- "When [Ron] Howard toured nasa, he learned that the visitors' favorite question was: How do you pee in space? "Well," he decided, "that means we'll have to show it in the movie." So they do. Added [Tom] Hanks: "Maybe in the sequel we'll show how they go doo-doo." Spoken like a steely-eyed missile man."
- "“Message reads: ‘Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man’.” / “What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”"
- "NASA Entry Flight Director Tony Ceccacci said the motto in Mission Control is "flight controllers don't cry." He tried to remain stoic – like a steely eyed missile man – after his team guided Atlantis and its crew through an era-ending atmospheric re-entry. "This will be the last time this team will be together," Ceccacci said, struggling to maintain his composure."
Etymology
From steely-eyed (“having a hard, strong, and determined mentality or mindset”) + missile + man. Probably popularized by the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, by American astronaut Jim Lovell (1928–2025) and American author and journalist Jeffrey Kluger (born 1954), as well as the 1995 film, Apollo 13, based on the book. The film has capsule communicator 1 “Andy” (portrayed by Brett Cullen) tell a technician (Walter von Huene), whose team had devised a solution to a problem with the spacecraft's carbon dioxide filters, “You, sir, are a steely-eyed missile man.” The book implies that the term had been in use at least since the early years of NASA, which was established in 1958: see the quotation.
Word Breakdown
- Root: *stek-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈstiliˌaɪd ˈmɪs(ə)l ˌmæn/
- British English: /ˈstiːliˌaɪd ˈmɪsaɪl ˌmæn/