A catastrophic
failure of the first launch of the NASA SLS
rocket, which destroys enough of the ground systems to scuttle the program.
Since the first launch is uncrewed, this could happen without any loss of human life, and is widely regarded as the best possible outcome of the program, finally ringing a
death knell to decades of pork and throwing good
money after bad. If the Wickwick event occurs, thousands of skilled NASA employees and contractors, squandering their productive years on the dead-end SLS program, will be freed up to pursue more fruitful endeavors in the field.
Named after an Ars Technica reader and commentor named Wickwick, who proposed this outcome and explained why it would be overall a good thing, in a comment thread in early
2022.
Everyone's tuning in to the
launch webcast to see if we
get a Wickwick Event, or if the SLS
boondoggle continues sucking the air out of NASA.