this is not a nominal situation

[GoodTaste]

The enormous Starship roared off a launch pad in southern Texas today and then exploded before it reached space, ending the first major test flight of the largest rocket ever built. Starship and its booster cleared the launch pad and soared to 39 kilometres high, then rotated out of control and blew up four minutes into flight, before the two could separate as planned. “Obviously, this is not a nominal situation,” said John Insprucker, principal integration engineer for the company SpaceX, which built Starship, on a webcast of the launch attempt.

Source: Nature SpaceX Starship: launch of biggest-ever rocket ends with explosion

What does "this is not a nominal situation" mean? The word norminal could mean "small in amount" and so I guess it means "this is not a minor mistake/an unsubstantial problem".

I am not sure. It could have meant more than that and, with a euphemistic rhetoric, showed off a style of being cool-headed, or whatsoever.

 

[Barque]

It could be a typo (or a slip of the tongue) for "normal".

"Nominal" can mean "small" but I don't think it's really the appropriate word here, even if he was saying it isn't a minor situation. If that's what he meant, I'd have expected a different word like "minor" or "insignificant".

and, with a euphemistic rhetoric, showed off a style of being cool-headed, or whatsoever.

What do you mean?

 

[GoodTaste]

It might be a jargon in astrophysics rather than a typo or a slip of tongue, because it could be defined as:
done smoothly as expected:
The space shot was nominal, proceeding without a hitch.

So the speaker was calm, not trying to shirk off responsibilities.

 

[Barque]

It might be a jargon in astrophysics

It isn't astrophysics jargon ( and 'jargon' is uncountable). I just checked and it's used in the aerospace (not the same as astrophysics) industry apparently, to mean "normal" or "satisfactory", or "as expected", as you say.

All right. Maybe that's what he meant.

 

[jutfrank]

I'm pretty sure it's an indirect reference to what became something of a meme a few years back when Mr Insprucker famously mispronounced the word 'nominal' as 'norminal', and everybody was asking what 'norminal' means.

 

[SoothingDave]

"Nominal" is a technical term referring to what the expected value of something is. What the normal is. For example, you have an expectation that the air in your home will be 20 degrees C because that is what you set your thermostat at. 20 would be the nominal value, but the actual measured temperature in different areas of your house will differ.

Nominal is normal, expected, typical value. Things went very much non-nominal.

 

[Barque]

something of a meme a few years back when Mr Insprucker famously mispronounced the word 'nominal' as 'norminal', and everybody was asking what 'norminal' means.

Now that you mention it, it rings a bell. I don't know if I'm thinking of something else. Will Google.

 

[jutfrank]

Things went very much non-nominal.

Phenomenally non-nominal, you might say.