Glossary

Every word the manual uses that a new player might not know, one line each. A term used on a page and missing here is a bug: say so.

A to D

Ablator: The layer a heat shield burns away as it takes the heat of re-entry. The card shows how much is left.
About list: The five rows at the bottom of Settings naming the build you run and whether it is connected.
Achievement: A feat the game notices and pays for in credits and discovery, once. Some are hidden until you earn them.
Administration: The Space Center building where companies offer contracts. Its level is how many you can hold at once, and how hard they get.
Advance: The credits a contract pays the moment you accept it. You owe it back, with a tenth on top, if the job is never finished.
Aerobrake: Slowing a ship by flying it through a world's air instead of spending fuel on the engine. Only worlds with an atmosphere allow it.
Airless world: A world with no atmosphere at all: nothing to slow a descent, nothing to heat a hull, and nothing to climb through. Nineteen of the 28 worlds and moons are airless.
Antenna: A part that carries your commands to an uncrewed ship. Its card gives a rating, a role and a draw.
Apoapsis: The highest point of an orbit, and the map marker AP. Burning here lifts the periapsis.
Astronaut: A Meek who can fly a pod. Every pod needs one aboard before the rocket may fly.
Astronaut Center: The Space Center building where the Meek are recruited. Its level is how many you can keep.
Attachment point: A place on a part where another part joins: the top or bottom of a stack, a point on a flank, or a face a wing sits on.
Barometer: The instrument that reads air pressure in kilopascals, and zero above the air.
Battery: A part that holds electricity and nothing else. Its charge reaches every part on the ship.
Biome: One band of a world's surface, with its own colour and its own kind of ground. A reading names the biome it was taken over.
Blackout: A Meek passing out under sustained load. The pilot's blackout kills the ship's controls until they come to.
Canopy: The open dome of a parachute. It opens over a second, drags the ship, and collapses at touchdown for good.
Capture burn: The burn that turns a fly-past into an orbit once you are inside a world's sphere of influence. Without it you cross the sphere and leave again.
Centre of lift: The point the air's lift acts through. The hangar draws it as the green arrow.
Centre of mass: The point the ship balances on. The hangar draws it as the black and yellow disc; thrust that misses it turns the ship.
Charge gauge: The lit slot on a battery's casing that empties as its charge goes, amber under a quarter and red under a tenth.
Client: The company whose name is on a contract. It pays the advance and the reward; the name is flavour and nothing else.
Closest approach: The nearest your forecast path comes to the target ship over the next lap of your orbit, marked CLOSEST on the map.
Comm Station: The Space Center building that is the ground end of every radio link: one dish, on Earth, for your whole game. Its level is its reach.
Comms chip: The map chip that draws the radio links, cycling through off, CHAIN and NETWORK each time you tap it.
Contract: A paid job from a company: meet its goals in one flight before its deadline for the reward, or pay the advance back.
Contract board: The list of contracts on offer and under way, opened from the Administration with Open contracts.
Contract tier: How demanding a contract is, 1 to 3. The Administration's level decides which tiers reach your board.
Cost: A rocket's price, every part's cost added up. It is what a launch charges.
Credits: The money. Launches, buildings and crew cost credits; achievements, contracts and recovery pay them.
Crew chip: The panel at the top left of the flight screen: who is aboard, what state they are in, and the days of food left.
Datum: The level a world's heights are measured from. A landing says how far above or below it the ship came to rest.
Deadline: The real-world time you have to finish a contract, counted from the moment you accept it. It runs while the game is closed.
Decoupler: The coupler that drops a booster off the flank: only its inner face lets go, so it leaves with the booster.
Deploy: Swing a folded panel or dish out of its housing. Deployed, it works and it is fragile; stowed, it is neither.
Destination picker: The sheet that opens on Fly once you own more than one launch site, one row per world you can launch from.
Discovery: The second currency. It buys tech nodes and nothing else, and is paid by achievements, including the ones a reading earns. Contracts pay credits only.
Dish: An antenna that rides up folded and swings out on a boom. Worth nothing to the network until it is deployed.
Dock: To bring two docking ports together slowly and squarely enough for the latches to close, joining two ships into one.
Docking Port: The latching ring two ships join through. It accepts nothing but another docking port, and fuel crosses the joint once it is made.
Dormant ship: A ship of yours out in the world with nobody flying it. It keeps its path and waits on the map.
Drag: The air pushing back on a moving ship. The hangar draws it as the blue arrow.
Drawer: The column of parts that opens beside the palette's category tabs when you tap one.
Drogue: A small parachute that opens safely at high speed to slow a ship for the main canopy.
Dwarf planet: A small world that goes round the Sun rather than round a planet. Three of them do: Schmeckle, Flurbo and Pluto.

E to M

Ejection burn: The burn that throws a ship out of the world it is orbiting and into a fall around the Sun. It is most of the cost of any trip between planets.
Electricity: The resource that runs pods, wheels, antennas and instruments. It weighs nothing and runs along every joint.
Encounter: The point where your path comes nearest a target ship, marked ENC on the map.
Engine: A part that burns fuel for thrust. Its push depends on the air around it: less at sea level, more in vacuum.
Escape: Leaving a world's pull for good. The map says ESCAPE where an orbit no longer closes.
Fairing: A shell over the nose of a rocket. What fits inside it takes no drag and no heating, and the shell is split off once the air is thin.
Feat: Something a flight reached that a Meek's card records: leaving the pad, reaching space, an orbit, a landing on the Moon or Mars.
Fleet: Every ship you have left out there, parked or in orbit, all of them shown on the map.
Food: The crew's rations. One filled seat eats one seat's worth a day, out of any larder aboard.
Freight: Transport work with nobody aboard: a client's package flown somewhere and brought back. The only kind of carrying work at tier 1.
G: How hard acceleration presses on the ship and its crew, as multiples of Earth's gravity. Every part and every Meek has a limit.
G-tolerance: The stat that says how much sustained load a Meek stays awake through: 4 G plus 0.6 G a point.
Gas giant: A world with no solid ground under its air. There are four, and what you go to them for is their moons.
Gimbal: An engine swinging its bell to steer. Most engines have a few degrees of it.
Give up: Dropping a contract under way for the same bill as missing its deadline. The button on the row arms first and sends on the second tap.
Goal: One condition a contract asks your ship to meet. Every goal on a contract must be met in the same flight.
Gravity turn: Tipping a climbing rocket over early so gravity swings it toward the horizon, which is how orbit is reached cheaply.
Ground station: The Comm Station's dish, standing on Earth and turning with the planet. Every radio link ends there, and there is only the one.
Half-shell: One of the two halves a fairing splits into when it is jettisoned. Each is flown, not deleted, and breaks when it lands.
Hangar: The screen where a rocket is built and saved, and where Fly lives.
Heat shield: A blunt plate of ablator mounted under a pod to take the heat of re-entry.
Hidden achievement: An achievement the game does not describe until you earn one. The sheet counts them into a single row and says nothing else.
Hop: One link in the chain between your ship and a ground station. The radio chip counts them.
Hypergolic: The propellant thruster blocks and the Escape Motor burn. It travels the same joints as fuel and never mixes with it.
Impact speed: The speed a part survives when it is the part that meets the ground, on its card as IMPACT.
Info card: The card that opens on a long press of a palette part, listing everything about it.
Instrument: A Thermometer or a Barometer: a part that takes one reading each time it is tapped or staged.
Isp: How far a kilogram of fuel takes you: the engine's efficiency, in seconds, quoted sea level to vacuum.
Jettison: To split a fairing off the rocket, either by tapping it or by staging it.
Landform: A named piece of ground on Earth, the Moon or Mars: a range, a plateau, a valley, a crater, a volcano or a field of dunes. Some achievements ask for one by kind.
Launch Pad: The Space Center building rockets start from, one per world. Its level caps how heavy and how tall a rocket may be.
Launch site: A world you can launch from. A world is a launch site once a Launch Pad stands on it.
Lead: How far ahead of the moment a reminder speaks, from as it happens to a day early.
Lift: The sideways force air makes on fins and wings. The hangar draws it as the green arrow.
Link: The radio path from a ground station to an uncrewed ship. Lose it and every control on that ship goes dead.
Maneuver node: A planned burn placed on your orbit on the map. Its handles set the push; the planned path shows where it takes you.
Map: The screen that shows worlds, orbits and every ship of yours, in flight and from the hangar.
Mass: How much the rocket weighs with every tank full, in tonnes. The Launch Pad caps it.
Memorial: The Lost tab at the Astronaut Center: every Meek you lost, with how and where.
Mirror: Flipping a part to the other side of the rocket. Two mirrored parts are linked, and moving one moves the other.
Moon: A world that orbits another world rather than the Sun. There are seventeen, and its sphere of influence sits inside its planet's.

N to R

Navball: The round instrument at the bottom of the flight screen: which way the nose points, the horizon, and the ship's speed.
Nerve: The stat that sets what a candidate signs for. A braver Meek is cheaper to hire.
Node card: The panel along the bottom of the tech tree for the node you tapped: what it sells, its tier, what it needs and the button that buys it.
Occlusion: A world's solid body sitting across a radio path and blocking it. The commonest reason a probe goes quiet.
Offer: A contract on the board that you have not signed. It has its own countdown, and letting it expire costs nothing.
Orbit: The closed path a ship coasts on around a world. It repeats itself exactly until a burn changes it.
Palette: The column of category tabs on the hangar's left edge. Tap one to open its drawer of parts.
Part sheet: The sheet that opens when you tap a part in flight: its actions, and the settings you may change in the air.
Passenger: A Meek handed to you by a tourist run. Free, outside the Astronaut Center's roster, and gone when the contract ends.
Payload: Whatever the rocket is carrying for its own sake: a satellite, an instrument, a lander.
Payload Bay: A hollow hull with clamshell doors. Cargo on its inner rails rides out of the airflow, and the doors open in flight.
Penalty: What an unfinished contract costs: the advance back plus a tenth of it, whether the deadline ran out or you gave up.
Periapsis: The lowest point of an orbit, and the map marker PE. Below a world's air, the orbit does not last.
Piece: What a dropped stage or a broken-off part becomes: a ship with nobody at the controls, still flying.
Piloting: The stat that says how hard the ship turns for the Meek at the controls.
Place: A world, a band of altitude, and — on the ground — the biome under you. What a reading is filed under and paid for.
Player id: The short name your account is kept under. Type it on another phone and your game follows.
Player sheet: The panel behind the hangar's credits chip: your two balances, and the way to Achievements and Readings.
Pod: A part with a seat and the controls in it. A rocket needs one, and the pod needs an astronaut.
Prograde: The way the ship is moving; the navball's ⊙ mark. Burning prograde raises the far side of the orbit.
Propellant: Anything an engine or a thruster throws out of a nozzle: oxygen and methane, solid fuel, hypergolic.
Properties sheet: The sheet that opens when you tap a part in the hangar: its settings, such as a tank's length.
Radio chip: The top-left chip on an uncrewed flight: LINK and the hop count, the signal strength, or NO LINK and why.
Range: An antenna's own rating, not how far it reaches. Two aerials reach the square root of their two ratings multiplied.
RCS: The thruster blocks that turn a ship or slide it sideways on hypergolic propellant, switched with the RCS button.
Reaction wheel: A spinning wheel inside a pod that turns the ship without fuel, slowly, anywhere.
Reading: One measurement by an instrument in flight, filed with where and when it was taken.
Readings log: Every reading you have taken, newest first, opened from the Player sheet in the hangar.
Readout: The strip along the top of the hangar: the rocket's mass, TWR and cost.
Recovery: Bringing a landed rocket home from the flight menu. Every part still aboard is refunded and the flight ends.
Recruit board: The Recruit tab at the Astronaut Center: seven candidates at a time, each with a price, each replaced when their offer runs out.
Relay: An antenna that carries other ships' commands as well as its own. Only the CR parts do it.
Reminder: An alarm set on a map point or a node that reaches your phone when the moment comes, even with the game closed.
Rendezvous: Bringing two ships to the same place in orbit at the same speed, close enough to dock.
Requires: The list on a node card of everything that must come first, each with a tick or a cross: the nodes above it, and on two nodes an achievement.
Research Centre: The Space Center building that opens the tech tree. Its level is which tiers of the tree you may buy from.
Resource: Anything a ship carries by the unit and spends: fuel, hypergolic, electricity, food, ablator.
Retrograde: Against the way the ship is moving; the navball's ⊗ mark. Burning retrograde lowers the far side of the orbit.
Reward: The credits a contract pays when its last goal is met.
Reward pending: The note on an achievement earned with no connection. The feat is yours; the credits and discovery arrive when the game reaches your account.
Ring: One of the hoops a fairing's skin is stretched over. Each has a slider, and widening one bulges the shell there.
Roster: The Meek you have hired and still hold. Your Astronaut Center's level is how many fit on it.

S to Z

Sandbox: A world of your own, switched on in Settings, with its own clock, time warp and saved worlds. Nothing done there is spent, earned or kept.
Sat Controller: The command part that flies a ship with nobody aboard, on its own reaction wheel and a small built-in aerial.
Science bonus: The extra a scientist aboard adds to a reading achievement: 10 % more credits and discovery per point of their science.
Scientist: The Meek trade that makes readings pay more. Only this trade pays it, whatever another Meek's science says.
Seat: One place for a Meek in a pod or cabin, filled on the part's Crew row in the hangar.
Separation Motor: A one-second solid rocket bolted to a booster's flank, fired as the booster lets go so the spent case is thrown clear of the ship.
Separator: The coupler that cuts a stack in line. Both its faces let go, and it blows itself clear rather than tumbling along behind.
Shared world: The one solar system every player flies in, on one real clock that no player can stop or speed up.
Ship library: The rockets you saved from the hangar, kept under your player id and there on any phone.
Site: One instrument at one place. What the survey ticks off, so a Barometer earns where a Thermometer already has.
Situation: Which band of altitude a reading was taken in: on the ground, low or high in the air, low or high space. Part of a place.
Solar panel: A folded stack of cells that swings out to make electricity. Its output follows the sunlight, never its facing.
Solid fuel: The grain cast into a solid booster. It never leaves the case it burns in.
Space Center: The screen behind the hangar's Center button: the buildings you own on a world and their levels.
Speed mode: What the navball's speed means: ORBIT, SURFACE or TARGET. Tap the navball to cycle it.
Sphere of influence: Where one world's pull is the one that matters. Crossing its edge hands your ship to the next world, marked SOI on the map.
Stage: One entry in the staging list: the parts that act together on one tap of STAGE.
Staging: The ordered list of what fires when: engines light, separators let go, parachutes deploy or cut.
Stowed: Folded away in its housing. A stowed panel makes nothing, a stowed dish hears nothing, and both are far tougher.
Surface gravity: How hard a world pulls at its own ground. It sets what thrust-to-weight your ship has there, and the destination picker prints it on every row.
Survey: The record of which places you have measured. Each instrument at each place pays discovery once, the first time you read it.
Symmetry link: The tie between a part and its mirror. Move, resize or delete one and the other follows.
Target: Another ship you have marked on the map. The navball and a chip then show where it is and how fast you close on it.
Tech node: One purchase on the tech tree. It puts parts in the palette, and some nodes open new worlds to launch from.
Tech tree: Every tech node, arranged by tier. Opened from the Research Centre; paid for in discovery.
The Meek: The people who fly your rockets: astronauts, scientists, engineers, tourists and the rest. Recruited at the Astronaut Center.
Thermometer: The instrument that reads air temperature in kelvin, or its own skin where there is no air.
Throttle: The lever at the flight screen's lower left. It sets how hard the lit engines push, from 0 % to 100 %.
Thrust: The engines' push. The hangar draws it as the magenta arrow.
Tidally locked: A moon that turns once for every lap of its planet, so it keeps the same face toward it. Every moon in the system is.
Tier: A band of the tech tree. The Research Centre's level decides how many tiers you may buy from.
Time warp: Running the world faster than real time, from 1× to 5000×. Sandbox only, and only while coasting clear of the air.
Toast: A line the game slides onto the screen to tell you something happened. It fades on its own.
Tourist: A trade you never hire. Contracts hand them to you as free passengers and take them back at the end.
Tourist run: A contract that hands you passengers to fly somewhere and bring home. It finishes on the recovery, not the landing.
Transport: A contract that pays you to carry something rather than to prove a part: a passenger, a package, a satellite. It never retires, and the board keeps two of its ten offers for it.
Trade: What a Meek does: astronaut, scientist, engineer, medic, botanist, nuclear scientist or tourist.
Transfer: The long coast between leaving one world's sphere of influence and arriving at another's. It is planned as a maneuver node and takes hours or days of world clock.
TWR: Thrust-to-weight ratio: the engines' push divided by the rocket's weight. Above 1.0 it can lift off.
Under way: A contract you have accepted and not yet finished. Your Administration's level is how many you may have at once.
Undock: To cut a docked joint, by tapping Undock on the port or by staging it. The two halves are pushed gently apart.
Unit: How every resource is counted, written u. Each unit but electricity has a weight the ship carries.
Unlock: Buying a node on the tech tree, and the label on the button that does it. Once bought, a node is yours for the rest of the game.
Whip: A fixed antenna with no latch: it works from the pad, cannot be staged and cannot be stowed.
World: A planet, moon or the sun. Every world has its own gravity, and some have air.
World clock: The time the shared world runs on. It keeps going while the game is closed.
Wrench: The engineer's stat. Nothing in flight reads it.
Δv (delta-v): How much a ship can change its speed with the fuel aboard, in m/s. The measure of how far a stage can take you.