"Pushing The Envelope"
This phrase is used to refer to an aircraft being taken to, and perhaps beyond, its designated altitude and speed limits. By extension, this phrase may be used to mean testing other limits, either within aerospace or in other fields e.g. Plus ultra (motto).
Read more about this topic: Flight Envelope
Famous quotes containing the words pushing the, pushing and/or envelope:
“Hands and knees
Pushing the Bear grass, thousands
Of arrowhead leavings over a
Hundred yards.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five
thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from
anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I
could completely imagine his suffering and I replied
that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not
imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to
remember that about imagination, that is when the
world gets dull when everybody does not know what
they can or what they cannot really imagine.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“... all my letters are read. I like that. I usually put something in there that I would like the staff to see. If some of the staff are lazy and choose not to read the mail, I usually write on the envelope “Legal Mail.” This way it will surely be read. It’s important that we educate everybody as we go along.”
—Jean Gump, U.S. pacifist. As quoted in The Great Divide, book 2, section 10, by Studs Terkel (1988)