Shuttle (pronounced shuht-l)
(1) In weaving, a device in a loom for passing or
shooting the weft thread through the shed from one side of the web to the
other, usually consisting of a boat-shaped piece of wood containing a bobbin on
which the weft thread is wound (ie the tool which carries the woof back and
forth (shuttling) between the warp threads on a loom).
(2) In a sewing machine, the sliding container (thread-holder)
that carries the lower thread through a loop of the upper thread to make a lock-stitch.
(3) In transport, a public conveyance (bus, train, ferry,
car, limousine aircraft), that travels back and forth at regular intervals over
a particular route, especially a short route or one connecting two transportation
systems; the service provided by such vehicles.
(4) In badminton, as shuttlecock, the lightweight object,
built with a weighted (usually rubber-covered) semi-spherical nose attached to
a conical construction (historically of feathers but now usually synthetic) and
used as a ball is used in other racquet games. Shuttlecock was also once widely
used as the name of the game but this is now rare.
(5) As space shuttle, vehicle designed to transport
people & cargo between Earth and outer-space, designed explicitly re-use with
a short turn-around between missions (often with initial capital letters). The term shuttlecraft is the generic
alternative, “space shuttle” most associated with the US vehicle (1981-2011).
(6) To cause (someone or something) to move back and
forth by or as if by a shuttle, often in the form “shuttling”.
(7) Any device which repeatedly moves back and forth
between two positions, either transporting something or transferring energy
between those points.
(8) In electrical engineering, as shuttle armature, a H-shaped
armature in the shape of an elongated shuttle with wires running longitudinally
in grooves, used in small electrical generators or motors, having a single coil
wound upon a the bobbin, the latter usually formed in soft iron.
(9) In diplomacy, as shuttle diplomacy, the practice of a
diplomat from a third country shuttling between two others countries to conduct
negotiations, the two protagonists declining directly to meet.
Pre 900: Shuttle was a merge from two sources. From (1) the
Middle English shutel, shotel, schetel,
schettell, schyttyl & scutel
(bar; bolt), from the Old English sċyttel
& sċutel (bar; bolt), the notion
being shut + -le. Shut was from the Middle English shutten & shetten, from the Old English scyttan
(to cause rapid movement, shoot a bolt, shut, bolt), from the Proto-Germanic skutjaną & skuttijaną (to bar, to bolt), from the Proto-Germanic skuttą & skuttjō (bar, bolt, shed), from the primitive Indo-European skewd & kewd- (to drive, fall upon, rush). The -le suffix was from the Middle English
-elen, -len & -lien, from the Old English -lian (the frequentative verbal suffix),
from the Proto-Germanic -lōną (the
frequentative verbal suffix) and was cognate with the West Frisian -elje, the Dutch -elen, the German -eln,
the Danish -le, the Swedish -la and the Icelandic -la.
It was used as a frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or
continuousness. From (2) the Middle English shitel
(missile; a weaver's instrument), shutel,
schetil, shotil, shetel, schootyll,
shutyll, schytle & scytyl (missile;
projectile; spear), from the Old English sċytel,
sċutel (dart, arrow) (related to the Middle High German schüzzel and the Swedish
skyttel), from the Proto-Germanic skutilaz, (related to the Middle High
German schüzzel and the Swedish skyttel) and cognate with the Old Norse skutill (harpoon), the idea akin to both
shut & shoot. Shuttle is a noun, verb
& adjective, shuttling is a noun & verb and shuttled and shuttles are verbs;
the noun plural is shuttles. The
adjectival form shuttle-like is more common than the rare shuttlesque (which is
listed as non-standard by the few sources to acknowledge its dubious existence).
A Lindsay Lohan advertising mural on the back of one of
the airport shuttle buses run by Milan Malpensa International Airport in
northern Italy.
The original sense in English is long obsolete, supplanted by
the senses gained from the weaving instrument, so called since 1338 on the
notion of it being “shot backwards and forwards” across the threads. The transitive sense (move something rapidly
to and fro) was documented from the 1540s, the same idea attached to the shuttle
services in transport, first used in 1895 (although the intransitive sense of “go
or move backward and forward like a shuttle” had been in use by at least 1843) in
early versions of what would come to be known as intra-urban “rapid transit systems”
(RTS), the one train that runs back and forth on the single line between fixed destinations
(often with intermediate stops). This
was picked up by ferry services in 1930, air routes in 1942, space travel in
1960 (in science fiction) and actual space vehicles in 1969. Shuttle in the sense it evolved in English is
used in many languages but a separate development was the naming of the weaving
instrument based on its resemblance to a boat (the Latin navicula, the French navette
and the German Weberschiff). The noun shuttlecock dates from the 1570s,
the “shuttle” element from it being propelled backwards and forwards over a net
and the “cock” an allusion to the attached anti-aerodynamic construction (originally
of feathers) which resembled a male bird's plume of tail feathers. The term Shuttle diplomacy came into use in
the 1970s thanks to tireless self-promotion by Dr Henry Kissinger although the
practice (of “good offices”) dates back centuries.
The Abbotsleigh class of 2020 pondering time flying
faster than a weaver’s shuttle.
The motto of the Sydney girl’s school Abbotsleigh is tempus celerius radio fugit (Time flies
faster than a weaver's shuttle), the idea behind that said to be: “As the shuttle flies a pattern is woven,
with the threads being the people, buildings and events. The pattern is
Abbotsleigh as it continues to grow in complexity and richness each year”. Quite whether a weaver’s shuttle (said by
some detractors to have been chosen as symbolic of the "proper" place
of women being in a state of domestic servitude for the convenience of men) is
appropriate for a girls’ school in the twenty-first century has been debated. The motto came from the family crest of
Marian Clarke (1853-1933), Abbotsleigh’s first headmistress (principle) and was
maintained using the family’s grammatically dubious form tempus fugit radio celerity until 1924 when the correct syntax was
substituted. It’s an urban myth the
mistake was permitted to stand until 1924 as a mark of respect while Ms Clarke
was alive; she lived a decade odd after the change although the family’s
heraldry was apparently never corrected.
The US (left) and USSR (centre) space shuttles compared
with a badminton shuttlecock (right).
The shuttlecock is rendered in a larger scale than the shuttles.
The US Space Shuttle was operated by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) between 1981-2011 as the low Earth
orbital vehicle which was the platform for its Space Transportation System
(STS). The plans, based on ideas first
explored in science fiction a decade earlier, for a (mostly) reusable spacecraft
system were first laid down in 1969 and despite intermittent funding, test
flights were first undertaken in 1981. Five
Space Shuttles were eventually built to completion and between 1981-2011, there
were over a hundred missions. The stresses
imposed on the craft were considerable which meant both the mission turn-arounds
were never as rapid as had been hoped and the extent to which components could
be reused had to be revised. There was
controversy too about the failures of NASA’s procedures which resulted in the
two accidents in which all seven crew aboard each shuttle were killed. The programme was retired in 2011.
Lindsay Lohan getting off the NAPA Shuttle, The Parent Trap (1998). The term "to disembark" was borrowed from nautical use and of late "to deplane" has entered English which seems unnecessary but the companion "to disemplane" was more absurd still; real people continue to "get on" and "get off" aircraft.
The Soviet Union’s space shuttle, construction of which
began in 1980, unsurprisingly, was visually very similar to the US vehicle,
there being only so many ways optimally to do these things. The USSR’s effort was the Буран (Buran) (Snowstorm or Blizzard), the
craft sharing the designation with the Soviet spaceplane project and its spaceships,
known as "Buran-class orbiters".
Although more than a dozen frames were laid down, few were ever
completed to be flight-ready and the Buran’s only flight was an un-crewed
orbital mission in 1988 which was successful.
The deteriorating economic and political situation in the Soviet Union
meant the programme stalled and in 1993 it was abandoned by the new Russian
government. The striking similarity
between the profile of the US & Soviet space shuttles and a badminton
shuttlecock is coincidental but not unrelated.
The space craft are designed as aerodynamic platforms because, although
not of relevance in the vacuum of space, they did have to operate as aircraft
while operating in Earth’s atmosphere whereas the shuttlecock is designed deliberately
as an anti-aerodynamic shape. The
shuttle’s shape was dictated by the need to maximize performance whereas a
shuttlecock is intentionally inefficient, the shape maximizing air-resistance
(drag) so it slows in flight.
Henry Kissinger, shuttling between dinner companions
(left to right), Dolly Parton (b 1946), Diane von Furstenberg (b 1946), Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997) and Carla Bruni (b 1967).
The term shuttle diplomacy describes the process in which
a mediator travels repeatedly between two or more parties involved in a
conflict or negotiation, in circumstances where the protagonists are unable or
unwilling to meet. Ostensibly, the purpose
of shuttle diplomacy is to facilitate communication between the parties and reach
a resolution of the dispute(s) but, being inherently political, it can be used
for other, less laudable goals. The
practice, if not the term has a long history, instances noted from antiquity and
the Holy Roman Empire was renowned for the neutral diplomats who would travel
back and forth between kings, princes, dukes and cardinals. During both the Conference of Vienna (1814-1815) and the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) the negotiations were marked by
intransigent politicians sitting in rooms while a (notionally) disinterested
notable shuttled between them, giving and taking until acquiescence was
extracted. A celebrated example of the
process played out between 1939-1940 when Swedish businessman
Birger Dahlerus (1891-1957) played
a quixotic role as amateur diplomat, shuttling between London and Berlin in what
proved a doomed attempt to avoid war. It
was for years seen as something romantic (if misguided) and it was only years
later when the UK Foreign Office’s papers on the matter were made available the
extent of the Swede’s conflicts of interest were revealed.
The term entered the
language in 1973 when Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor
1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977) used it to refer to his efforts
to negotiate an end to the Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab
neighbors. Kissinger shuttled between Tel
Aviv, Cairo and other Middle Eastern capitals in an attempt to broker a
ceasefire and improve diplomatic relations, enjoying some success, achieving a bilateral
peace between Egypt and Israel as well as a number of disengagement agreements. Some historians and foreign policy scholars
however, while acknowledging what was achieved, have suggested that it was the Kissinger’s
approach to the region in the years leading up to the war which contributed to
the outbreak of hostilities.
Kissinger has also been criticized on the basis that
shuttle diplomacy was never anything more than him playing a game of realpolitik
on a multi-dimensional chessboard rather than an attempt to imagine a regional architecture
which could produce a comprehensive peace plan in the Middle East, his emphasis
on securing something in the interest of the US (a treaty between Egypt and
Israel) meaning the vital issue of Palestine and its potential to assist in
securing long-term peace in the region was not just neglected but ignored. Cynics, noting his academic background and research
interests, compared his shuttle diplomacy with the travels of emissaries in the
Holy Roman Empire who would travel between the Holy See, palaces and chancelleries
variously to reassure the troubled, sooth hurt feelings and cajole the diffident. There was also the idea of Henry the self-promoting
celebrity who could bring peace to Vietnam and Nixon to China, the political wizard
who solved problems as they arose. Certainly,
the circumstances in which Kissinger was able to use shuttle diplomacy as a political
narrative were unique. He’d first
undermined and then replaced William Rogers (1913–2001; US secretary of state
1969-1973) as secretary of state and even before becoming virtually the last
major figure still standing from Richard Nixon’s (1913-1994; US president
1969-1974) first term as the Watergate affair took its toll, essentially took personal
control of the direction of US foreign policy.
As he put it “…one of the more
cruel torments of Nixon’s Watergate purgatory was my emergence as the
preeminent figure in foreign policy”.
So, opportunistic his initiatives may have been but there
were after all real problems to be solved and it seems unfair to criticize
Kissinger for doing what he did rather than constructing some counter-factual grand
design which might have created a permanent, settled peace in the Middle
East. However, among realists (and
Kissinger was dean of the school), even then there were few who believed such a
thing was any longer possible possible (certainly since the conclusion of the
six-day war in 1967) and Kissinger certainly achieved something and to do that
it’s necessary to understand there are some problems which really can only endlessly
be managed and never solved. Some
problems are insoluble, something lost on many US presidents infected more than
most by the diminishing but still real feelings of optimism and exceptionalism
that have for centuries characterized the American national character. Until he met Elizabeth Holmes (b 1984; CEO of US biotech company Theranos 2003-2018), nothing fooled Henry.
