Skyhook

  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Skyhook

Definition: Skyhook

Skyhook

Noun

1. Helicopter carrying a reel of steel cable that can be used to lift and transport heavy objects.

2. A hook that is imagined to be suspended from the sky.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 


Specialty Definition: Skyhook

DomainDefinition

Food & Agriculture

A self-propelled logging machine, comprising a powered and manned carriage suspended from and travelling along one or more tight skylines, and equipped with blocks and tackle for hoisting and transporting loads. Source: European Union. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Skyhook

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A skyhook is a hypothetical structure used for transporting material to and from a planet's surface into orbit. The largest and perhaps simplest of these is the space elevator, a cable that runs all the way from the planet's surface to beyond synchronous orbit. Smaller skyhooks include hypersonic skyhooks, rotating cables in lower orbits whose ends dip repeatedly down close to the planet's surface to snag payloads and lift them up. Large rotating tethers can also be used far from a planet's surface to transfer momentum to and from payloads, changing their orbits without the expenditure of reaction mass.

See tether propulsion for more details on various types of skyhooks.

The term skyhook was also used by Daniel Dennett in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea to describe a source of design complexity that did not build on lower, simpler layers -- loosely, a miracle. Dennett contrasts theories of complexity which require such miracles with those based on "cranes" -- structures which permit greater complexity but are founded solidly "on the ground" of that which has gone before.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Skyhook."

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Crosswords: Skyhook

Specialty definitions using "skyhook": constant-level balloonskyhook balloon. (references)

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Commercial Usage: Skyhook

DomainTitle

Books

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Photo Album: Skyhook

ThumbnailDescription & Credit

Ten-million cubic foot "Winzen" research balloon on the carrier's flight deck just prior to launching, during Operation "Skyhook", Refly "B", 30 January 1960. The balloon carried scientific devices to measure and record primary cosmic rays at 18-to-22 miles altitude. Credit: NAVY.

Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Usage Frequency: Skyhook

"Skyhook" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 87.50% of the time. "Skyhook" is used about 8 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words
Rank in English
Noun (singular)87.5%7133,076
Lexical Verb (base form)12.5%1339,140
                    Total100.00%8N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Skyhook

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

skyhook

27

skyhook crane

11

damping skyhook

3

control skyhook

3
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Skyhook

Derivations

Words beginning with "skyhook": skyhooks. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Skyhook" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: schook, Skyhawk. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Anagrams: Skyhook

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "h-k-k-o-o-s-y"

-2 letters: hooks, hooky, kooks, kooky, shook.

-3 letters: hook, hoys, kook, oohs, shoo, sook, yoks.

-4 letters: hoy, kos, oho, ohs, ooh, shy, sky, soy, yok.

-5 letters: ho, oh, os, oy, sh, so, yo.

 Words containing the letters "h-k-k-o-o-s-y"
 

+1 letter: kolkhosy, skyhooks.

 

+3 letters: hokypokies.

 

+4 letters: hokeypokeys.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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Alternative Orthography: Skyhook


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

53 6B 79 68 6F 6F 6B

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

...    -.-    -.--.    ....    ---    ---    -.-

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01010011 01101011 01111001 01101000 01101111 01101111 01101011

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#83 &#107 &#121 &#104 &#111 &#111 &#107

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0053 006B 0079 0068 006F 006F 006B

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

53779174818177

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Crosswords
3. Usage: Commercial
4. Images: Photo Album
5. Usage Frequency
6. Expressions: Internet
7. Derivations
8. Anagrams
9. Orthography
10. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.