{"id":943029,"date":"2026-10-23T06:46:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943029\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T06:46:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:46:18","slug":"a-typography-geek-pointed-out-something-about-the-space-shuttle-discovery-and-now-i-cant-unsee-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943029\/","title":{"rendered":"A Typography Geek Pointed Out Something About The Space Shuttle Discovery And Now I Can’t Unsee It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though I was born in the Apollo Era, barely, the spacecraft that I think had the most influence on my childhood had to be the Space Shuttles. I remember poring over diagrams and drawings of the shuttles in\u00a0National Geographic\u00a0foldouts, where they even took my attention from the Forbidden Nipples seen on some of the other pages. I remember watching that first launch of the shuttle\u00a0Colombia\u00a0in 1981, I remember the tragedy of the\u00a0Challenger\u00a0in 1986, and I remember covering the process of moving the orbiter\u00a0<\/a>Endeavour\u00a0through the streets of Los Angeles to its eventual home at the California Science Center. And more recently, I\u2019ve taken my kid to see the orbiter\u00a0Discovery at the Udvar-Hazy Center<\/a> just outside of Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that orbiter that I want to talk about specifically, because I saw a social media post about the orbiter Discovery that grabbed my attention<\/a> and held it with the sort of fierce grip I imagine Miss Piggy employs on Kermit\u2019s impossibly thin limbs when they\u2019re alone.<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

That post was on Threads, and I just figured out how to embed a post from that site, so here, you can see it for yourself:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wait, what?\u00a0Discovery has an upside-down \u2018s\u2019 in its name? How the hell did that happen?\u00a0Discovery was usually considered, by astronauts and NASA people, the jewel in the Space Shuttle crown. It was recognized to be the most reliable and best-performing of all the orbiters, and had the most missions and time in space<\/a>. Since it was first launched in 1984, Discovery completed 39 missions, spent in total a full year in space, and traveled 150 million miles.<\/p>\n

The thing flew for 27 years, and somehow nobody noticed that the \u2018s\u2019 was upside down on the starboard side name text?<\/p>\n

I mean, I guess I should be more understanding; I\u2019ve seen it several times and never noticed, and it wasn\u2019t until just tonight that I looked back at some old photos I took of\u00a0Discovery\u00a0the last time I was there and saw, holy crap, the dude on Threads was right. That \u2018s\u2019 is rotated 180\u00b0.<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: Jason Torchinsky<\/p>\n

Now, the typography on the shuttle orbiters follows NASA\u2019s carefully-planned and strictly-enforced graphic and typographic guidelines<\/a>, which state that the typography used on the spacecraft should be Helvetica Medium:<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: NASA<\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s take a look at the typography on the orbiter:<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: Jason Torchinsky<\/p>\n

(the \u2018r\u2019 on the font I used there feels a bit different, too, but this gets the point across and I have to get on a flight in a few hours so I\u2019m gonna let that slide)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a subtle difference, but as you can see, the starboard side\u2019s name definitely has that flipped \u2018s.\u2019 It\u2019s subtle, but the Helvetica \u2018s\u2019 is slightly wider on the bottom, giving the letter a somewhat more settled appearance. Here, look:<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: Jason Torchinsky<\/p>\n

You can see the difference there, right? I feel like once it\u2019s pointed out, you can\u2019t help but notice it. The \u2018v\u2019 on the port side looks oddly thick, too, now that I\u2019m looking at it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been told that the graphics on these orbiters was applied using large stencils and special space-grade paint, and I\u2019m sure the complex curves of the fuselage didn\u2019t make the application of these elements easy. It\u2019s understandable that a letter stencil may have been flipped around, but I am sort of surprised it was never corrected in its 27 years of service life.<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: Jason Torchinsky<\/p>\n

All the other graphics and typography are applied with impressive precision; maybe there were people who knew that \u2018s\u2019 was wrong, but kind of liked that subtle imperfection, as it does add character to the spacecraft. I get that, absolutely. If I was in charge, I\u2019d have just let it ride, too.<\/p>\n

\"CsImage: Jason Torchinsky<\/p>\n

I still can\u2019t believe I\u2019d never clocked this before; as a typographic geek and a space geek who has spent far too much time looking at pictures of spacecraft in books and online, you\u2019d think I\u2019d have encountered this before, but, nope. Or if I did, it didn\u2019t make enough of an impression to consciously note it or remember.<\/p>\n

But now that it\u2019s there? I can\u2019t unsee it. And I\u2019m sort of delighted by that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though I was born in the Apollo Era, barely, the spacecraft that I think had the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,176730,8095,192766,322825,47191,66,306,111345,174206],"class_list":["post-943029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cold-start","tag-discovery","tag-error","tag-helvetica","tag-mistake","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-shuttle","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}