Celeste!

Spent an absurd amount of time a couple days ago preparing stuff about House's infamous Time Borrowed canon Repconn rocket crash...

The idea is it was the largest orbital vehicle ever built and supposed to be for space colonization, large enough to carry crew and supplies to start colonies on other planets, but it was partially subsidized by the US government with the condition that it would be used in the war effort to carry troops into battle. But then production stretched longer than planned and the government threatened House with a profiteering/defrauding investigation if he didn't test launch on the original estimated date, so he decided to pilot it in case something went wrong (he didn't trust anyone else to try and salvage it). Anyway, test launch happens, within minutes something goes wrong, heat shield damage, explosion, idk. Rapid depressurization or something kills the other two people onboard, House is badly injured but manages to crash into Lake Mead and survive.

It's heavily based on the Hughes H-4 Hercules, so the names come from the different names that had:

Official name: The Repconn H-8 Daedalus

Registration: NX79254 (NX denotes that it was experimental and the numbers stand for GIBED which means mocked)

The semi-official branding name: The Mobile Metropolis/Daedalus (Hughes' preferred nickname was the Flying Boat/Hercules)

The name used by the media (before the crash) to imply House is defrauding the American people: The Star-Spangled Scammer (paralleling the Spruce Goose nickname, which Hughes hated)

And even in 2281 when Time Borrowed happens, House still stores a smaller, earlier prototype at the Lucky 38, the H-4 that he tinkers on from time to time through a Securitron which will be used in a far distant chapter for a quick getaway when uhhhhhh plot stuff happens.

Anyway. Some of this will come up in chapter 5 because Johanna is going to the Repconn headquarters and House will talk about his plans for space travel and she's going to be like uhhhh 😬 is that a good idea? And he's going to be like why wouldn't it be and she'll be like oh uh sorry I'm not trying to be rude but uh that time your rocket exploded and he's going to be so indignant like I had hundreds of successful launches but all you can remember is the one catastrophic failure??

To be fair in universe this was like. Devastating global news. He doesn't have much right to be so huffy about it, of course she'd remember, it was probably on every channel for weeks, and psh- yeah, maybe he missed the sensationalism because he was in a "medical coma" in "the hospital" to "recover" or whatever but can you blame her??