The resulting graphic of the “Up Goer Five” is absurd, as it should be. But it also very clearly illustrates that, while it’s possible to describe the Up Goer Five with ten hundred words, one kind of misses the interesting nuance. Cold air for burning. This part had a very big problem once is likely an allusion to the Apollo 1 fire that killed three people 13 oxygen-tank explosion that made a lunar landing impossible. And Kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died and someone said “Oh, the [humans]!” refers to the Hindenburg disaster (or to WKRP in Cincinnati, if you are a fan of Les Nessman). The Part that flies down to the other world is the Lunar Module. That’s all fairly straight forward. But what to make of the label Full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power. Tallow? Whale oil? Beeswax? Sometimes, there’s just no substitute for a word like “ullage” — or “kerosene,” for that matter. [XKCD
