Brennschluss

Brennschluss (a loanword, from the German Brennschluß) is either the cessation of fuel burning in a rocket or the time that the burning ceases: the cessation may result from the consumption of the propellants, from deliberate shutoff, or from some other cause.^[1] After Brennschluss, the rocket is subject only to external forces, notably that due to gravity.

In the 1950s, former German rocket engineer Willy Ley, who had emigrated before the Anschluss and hence never worked on the V-2 rocket, tried to get this term used by the English-speaking aerospace industry. The British used the term "all-burnt" while the Americans used "burn-out."

Cultural references

The term Brennschluss is used in various English literary works, including:

• The science fiction short story Honeymoon in Hell (1950) by Fredric Brown
• The novel Gravity's Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
• The science fiction novel Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet (1952) written by Harold L. Goodwin (under the pseudonym Blake Savage)
• The science fiction novel The Rolling Stones (also called Space Family Stone) (1952) by Robert A. Heinlein
• The science fiction novel Double Star (1956) by Robert A. Heinlein
• The science fiction novel Fiasco (1986) by Stanislaw Lem^[2]

References

1. "NASA Dictionary of Technical Terms for Aerospace Use".
2. Lem, Stanislaw (1986). Fiasco. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. p. 309. ISBN 0-15-630630-1.