Credit: U.S. Navy
In the world of aerospace engineering, even the smallest miscalculation can lead to catastrophic failure. And in the past few years, a phrase has emerged as a humorous way to describe those unfortunate events: “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” often shortened to RUD. This technical-sounding euphemism, often deployed in the aftermath of rocket explosions, has become a staple in modern spaceflight jargon, is widely used when a rocket fails and has entered into common vernacular. But where did the phrase come from?
Not SpaceX
Many people credit SpaceX’s Elon Musk for inventing the term “RUD.” It’s true that Musk popularized it in popular culture, but “RUD” is older than SpaceX and maybe older than Elon Musk himself. While Musk and his companies have revolutionized industries and created countless original inventions along the way, inventing the term “RUD” is not one of them.
Photo via Red?dit.com
So Where Does “RUD” Come From?
The MAC Flyer was a safety magazine published by the US Air Force’s Military Airlift Command Safety Office from 1966 to 1986, and in 1967, the term “unscheduled disassembly” was used in one of their article. While not quite a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” it was very close to it.
A 2009 NASA publication, “Remembering The Giants – Apollo Rocket Propulsion Development” (link goes to a PDF), recounts the stories of the heady days of Project Apollo when engineers around the United States were working diligently to perfect the hardware that would eventually land a human on the surface of the moon. One engineer’s recollection in that document mentions using a very similar euphemism:
Others claim it was in an early 1970s-era US Navy training manual, and was related to improper gun usage, but that manual is difficult to locate to prove the story true. In any case, the use by Apollo engineers in the 1960s would predate that in any case.
For his part, the first time Elon Musk mentioned RUD on social media was in January 2015 when he tweeted the term for the first time. The Guardian newspaper of that date reported :
Private spaceflight company SpaceX has released new pictures of its Falcon 9 rocket attempting to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean before undergoing what its chief executive, Elon Musk, euphemistically referred to as “RUD” – that’s “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.
In other words, it blew up.
That was back during the days when SpaceX was perfecting landing their Falcon 9 boosters, with the first few tries resulting in spectacular failures. They’ve since landed their orbital rocket boosters successfully about 400 times since then, and have forever changed the economics of spaceflight in so doing. Never one to shy away from a little self-deprecation, SpaceX released this video of those first attempts several years ago:
Many of those failures were RUDs, and in fact, they put the term firmly in the mind of space aficionados around the world.
The First Time “Rapidly Unplanned Disassembly” Was In Print
Researchers often cite 1991 and in the context of sailing as the first use of “rapid unplanned disassembly” or RUD in an article about sails in the Vancouver Sun.
While a sail shedding itself and billowing in a strong wind might not match the drama of an exploding rocket, it definitely would not be a good (or a cheap) day for the master of that vessel.
Now Used…Everywhere
RUD has transcended its aerospace origins, finding a place in discussions of technology and engineering failures across industries. It has been used to describe everything from the implosion of bridges to error-prone software releases, always with a hint of self-deprecating humor.
Social media has further cemented the term’s popularity, with memes and videos highlighting both historical and modern engineering mishaps. When a Starship prototype exploded during testing in 2020, SpaceX tweeted: “We had a rapid unscheduled disassembly, but we learned a lot!” The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with fans applauding the company’s transparency and optimism.
At the end of the day, it’s probably fair to say that no one knows for sure who dreamed up the phrase “rapidly unscheduled disassembly.” More than likely, it was an aerospace engineer or technician a long time ago in some forgotten corner of the industry. Maybe it was a bit of military jargon forgotten and now reborn. Whoever it was, they had a wicked sense of dark humor and invented a perfect phrase to encapsulate a bad day at the office.
Let’s just hope for the sake of rocket manufacturers and space fans alike that it’s used sparingly to describe future launches and landings.
See Also: The Story of The “Banana River Ballistic Missile” Event
In the early days of spaceflight at The Cape, anything could happen, and sometimes, the rocket could go anywhere. One fine day, a flaming part of one did just that.
