THE NOW INFAMOUS "ROCKETMAN" THREAD

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"And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man"
- Stewie Griffin Parodying William Shatner Covering Elton John

To you mind what exactly is the job of a rocketman? The position clearly requires no particular scientific knowledge, so it's totally unlike the job of "astronaut" we have today which requires you to understand quite a bit of "this science". But a rocket man's disavowal of science also seems to hint at a touch of blue-collar anti-intellectualism.

I mean, a rocket man kind of seems to understand at least some of "this science", like he demonstrates a basic understanding that Mars isn't a good place to raise your children because of the instantly fatal subzero temperatures, but he mentions a lack of child care facilities on Mars as being a negative in raising children there before he mentions the atmosphere, which is made of carbon dioxide, and poisonous to humans both child and adult. The last thing to consider is that it's apparently a 9-5 job with a commute (presumably a space commute), which is even more inconsistent with how our present day astronauts live their lives than disavowing scientific understanding.

So as we've established it's not astronaut and that it requires no scientific expertise, most likely no more than a bachelor's at most, what is the job description for 'rocketman'?

in 500 words or less
It's a person who rides a rocket, obviously. Hence the term, rocket man.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
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Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
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pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Slim Pickens followed by Cowboy Bebop. This thread could potentially be the greatest thread in history.
AtiyaTheSeeker
In all fairness, bird shrapnel isn't as deadly as wood shrapnel
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LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Shit, I was going to post the same clip as Pianotm.

Anyway, a rocketman is a man who was bitten by a radioactive rocket and gained the superpowers of a rocket, including jet thrusters on his feet, heat shielding, and the ability to explode.
LockeZ
author=pianotm


I see your Dr. Strangelove and raise you...The Offspring?

Man the opening theme of bebop is like the greatest song ever.

I wish I could ever be as attracted to any flesh and blood woman as I am to Faye. I mean...even if she was both real and gay it would never work, she is OBVIOUSLY a total self-centered bitch, you don't exactly need to do a deep dive on the series to realize that. I have questionable tastes even when it comes to imaginary women.

Pedantic Nerdery Go:
A nuclear bomb is not a rocket. The reason that Slim Pickens is riding that thing straight down and not in a more lateral direction is that it doesn't have a rocket motor. A bazooka, an RPG-7 (kinda obviously, it's what the R stands for), a rocket ship (obviously), a rocket pod on an attack aircraft, and a katyusha truck are all rockets, but a JDAM (laser guided bomb) and a grenade launcher aren't.

Rockets move under their own power (unlike bombs and grenades) but are "dumb" weapons with no guidance system (unlike missiles, i.e. T.O.W. missiles, cruise missiles etcetera).
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
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StormCrow
Rockets move under their own power (unlike bombs and grenades) but are "dumb" weapons with no guidance system (unlike missiles, i.e. T.O.W. missiles, cruise missiles etcetera).


This is also not correct.

Reference:
First Man
Apollo 13
The Right Stuff
NASA's Youtube channel
SpaceX's Youtube channel

Those rockets clearly have guidance systems, and they are definitively rockets, hence why they are called rockets.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
I could listen to katyusha rockets firing off all day omg

If I'm not mistaken, they were the present that Adolph Hitler got for his last birthday, courtesy of Stalin and the Red Army. I mean, they all fell on Berlin so Hitler didn't get his present directly, but he got the idea.

Anyone operating those trucks: rocketmen. No question.

Those rockets clearly have guidance systems, and they are definitively rockets, hence why they are called rockets.


So a missile is a rocket with a built in guidance system. The thing about (real life) space shuttles is that they are generally made of two parts, the shuttle itself, and a rocket booster which is jettisoned after the shuttle achieves a certain altitude (this is called separation). So actually, in the case of space shuttle launches, the "rocket" component is separate from the component that has a guidance system (and life support and scientific instrumentation etcetera).

////THE ROCKETMAN THREAD SO FAR IN REVIEW////
@Liberty: visual reference as citation, please.
@pianotm: Major Kong counts. Even if a nuke isn't technically a rocket, he's crazy enough to make up for it. Crazy can make up for a lot. YEEEEEEHAWWWWWW!
@Sooz: I'm not sure who in the clip is supposed to be the rocket man. I mean, clearly it's not Faye, who can't be a rocket man because she's a heavy metal queen (I think that might count as a triple entendre?), the title of the episode. Incidentally I typed "Freddie Mercury Peak Gay" into gooble and could not find an image worthy of the search string. Ironically for the name of the band he fronted, Freddie was apparently pretty butch. (Also he's not gay he's what Kinsey might have called "incidentally bisexual": translation, you're in a rock band, it is incumbent on you to bang groupies, kind of how Kinsey labeled men that had done prison time "incidentally homosexual", just better in every conceivable way.)

ANYWAY the crew of the Bebop meet most of the criteria for being rocket men, they're working class joes flying around space without understanding much if any of the scientific principles that let them do so...but the fact that they are super explicitly bounty hunters kind of makes them explicitly not rocket men. (You can't cross-class.)
@LockeZ: I cannot argue with that logic.
@Atiya (you will be missed): most objectively correct answer, strictly speaking (never seen that movie actually).
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