When and how did the term to “go ballistic” come to be used to mean “to rather lose one’s cool”.
I first read the term in the context of guided (air to air) missiles that are no longer tracking and so follow an un-guided (ballistic) path. That is, the thing has already be fired it’s just off target - that’s not really how the phrase is used in common parlance.
Someone out there knows this.
I think it’s probably more accurately attributable to either high-performance jet aircraft or surface-to-surface missiles.
In jets, it means that your aircraft is getting enough lift to stay airborne from its engines alone (discounting lift from the wings). This requires pretty serious engines running damn near the red-line, and can push the aircraft to a higher altitude than that at which its control surfaces are efficient. The parallel would be “he was full of angry/aggressive energy, and no longer totally in control of himself”.
In surface-to-surface missiles, the engine’s or motor’s burn time is very short compared to the rest of the missile’s flight. In this case, the idiom is “he was so angry that the fury of his outburst sent him down an uncontrollable path.”
Both idioms express a loss of control, which is really what happens when a jet or missile goes ballistic.
It’s not that the missile is off target, it’s that the rocket has shut off, so it turns into a simple physics 1 problem (if you ignore air friction). You know, the ones where you shoot something off a cliff? Basically, you’ve got a body with mass and velocity, and you see how the force of gravity effects the body.
That’s probably not the exact origin of the phrase though. I’m guessing it’s ballistic missles. They shoot straight up in the air, which is the image the phrase is trying to convey. Or at least that’s what I’m getting; someone who loses their cool shoots straight up in the air.
On preview, Jurph’s loss of control explanation is pretty good too, but pretty much the same.
OK. I know that technically a ballistic path would be like a cannonball or tennis ball. It’s just the first time I saw the phrase was a Vietnam war era fighter jock describing a Sidewinder or whatever losing its lock and zooming off out of control. This was a looong time ago (20+ years). What I’m wondering is how a technical term like this gets into the heads of the teeming millions.
A lot of times, the technically correct usage of a term is forgotten when it becomes a popular phrase, but its incorrect usage becomes accepted because it sounds cool. (This is actually one of my pet peeves, but I’ll spare you the rant.)
Spam is a perfect example. It was originally coined to describe an annoyance tactic, where identical copies of the same message were sent to a newsgroup or mailbox. Thus, the Monty Python viking skit makes sense - endless, meaningless repetition.
But somehow, it got attached to the concept of unsolicited commercial advertisements, and stuck to that. (Possibly because to non-geeks, “spam” connotes an unpalatable food, not a comedy skit.)
Heck, just the other day, I got a recorded direct marketing message on my home answering machine, and I called it “spam.”
In the 50’s, ballistic missiles were the ultimate threat. People who didn’t know what ‘ballistic’ meant were hearing the phrase all the time, attached to the concept of weapons of mass destruction. So by context, ‘ballistic’ meant ‘intensely threatening,’ and thus, “going ballistic” describes a temper tantrum or rampage.
I’m not saying this is the true etymology of “going ballistic,” but without a cite, we can’t assume a technically accurate one, either. We could easily outsmart ourselves.
Here’s another SDMB thread.
Also from that thread, check this page.