When it stands for "Trans-Mars Injection orbit" of course! Wouldn't it be great if Relativity Space and Impulse came out of left field to beat Elon Musk (SpaceX) to Mars? Oooh, that would be fun to watch!
In other news, what sometimes feels like "Too Much Information" is actually a good thing. In fact, it's exactly what your reader wants, but won't notice unless you keep it from them. Here's one example:
Sergeant Weller glared at the troops. Two entire minutes passed as his eyes bored into them. In a voice that had terrified many a recruit, he snarled, "It has come to our attention that a number of you have contemplated surrendering this fort to the demonstrators outside..."
I understand this author's desire to write tight and keep this scene moving along. No need to get bogged down in the minutiae of twitching eyebrows or trickles of sweat or thoughts of remorse or rebellion among the troops, or thoughts of suspicion and dire retribution in Sgt. Weller's mind, or the uneasiness of his aide who might secretly empathize with both sides. But "two entire minutes" is a long time for these characters to stand in tableau!
If you want to whoosh along, do so by avoiding specific time qualifiers. Let the verb do the work:
Sergeant Weller glared at the troops.
A glare takes a certain amount of time. Only when it's a quick glare, a brief glare, or a furtive* glare (all of which feel like they take less time), do we know it isn't a normal-duration glare. If one character glares at another, it implies that the glare continues until the next thing happens, or even continues while the next thing is happening. So you do not need to specify "He glared at them for a full minute" or "for two minutes."
As soon as you introduce clock time that's longer than a few seconds, you create a sort of "scene-within-a-scene" (similar to a back-flash, a flashback within a scene that doesn't merit its own separate scene). And when you do that, something must happen within that timeframe, within that micro-scene.
In this case, all the things we mentioned earlier might be put into that "two entire minutes."
We could choose one POV, perhaps Sgt. Weller's POV, or that of Sgt. Weller's aide, or the fort's commander who is letting Weller handle the reaming of the troops but who is standing right there with him, cold and stern and still but definitely not passive.
We could choose two or more POVs: the secretly seditious soldiers vs. the confused innocents and perhaps a frustrated veteran or two who can't believe the idiots got so close to actual treason; Sgt Weller of course (I am so curious! Who does Weller suspect of sedition, who is he sure of, who is he hoping to scare away from seditious temptation? How does the sergeant "read" the troops he has pinned with his glare? The sergeant isn't waiting for a countdown timer, mind blank: if the sergeant stares at the troops for two minutes, that means it must have taken two minutes for the sergeant to do something, probably several things You must tell the reader those things. Is he looking for signs of cracking? Which soldiers are displaying those signs? Which nervous soldier is he discounting as weak-minded but innocent, and which is he NOT discounting because he believes them stone-cold traitors who won't be fazed by anyone's glare?
Normally this would all be TMI, and would bog down the pacing of the scene. But if you plant a significant time-specification in a scene, you are obligated to give the reader this kind of TMI, otherwise it feels contrived.
A twig snapped in the darkness, and Estil held still for two entire minutes.
They drove along the coast for fifteen minutes. Jackson pulled over onto the stone-strewn shoulder.
It took two months to repair the hyperdrive, then the ship uncoupled from the station and drifted free.
In each case, the reader is left wondering how that time might have been spent.
Now, you don't need to get into every moment in excruciating slow-motion detail (although that could work well for a two-minute-glare micro-scene! Just as it would for the killing blow in a significant fight scene). You can front-load some insight for the reader:
No bars, no cafes, not even a decent dining hall. Just the silent drones scurrying about the steel grids and grates that passed for flooring—and ceiling and furniture and beds, probably, if they ever slept. They never acknowledged the presence of non-t'Klickt creatures like him. At least they wouldn't kill him, although the boredom might.
It took two months for the t'Klickt drones to repair the hyperdrive, then the ship uncoupled from the station and drifted free.
Or you can follow the timeframe with some insight:
A twig snapped in the darkness, and Estil held still for two entire minutes. That was long enough for any innocent nocturnal creature to betray its presence with another more-subtle sound, which Estil would surely detect. Nothing. Silently, slowly, Estil slipped his long knife free of its sheath.
And you can make the micro-scene as simple as you like. Just a few words can suffice:
They drove along the coast in grim silence for fifteen minutes. Finally, Jackson pulled over onto the stone-strewn shoulder.
But you can't just leave us hanging for "two entire minutes" —or fifteen minutes, or two months, etc. If a specific nontrivial amount of time passes, we need some idea of why that amount of time, or what happened during that time.
Of course, another easy way for this author to fix this problem without creating a micro-scene that needs some explanation, but still adding some colorful emphasis to the verb, is simply to make the timeframe nonspecific, subjective:
Sergeant Weller glared at the troops for what seemed like an eternity.
Sergeant Weller glared at the troops until they began to sweat and fidget.
We are no longer wondering what happened for "two entire minutes" or wondering why it was two minutes, not one minute, or ten minutes, or 45 seconds, or whatever. We get the idea the author was trying to convey. Problem solved!
...and it really wasn't TMI after all.
...I really am looking forward to that first privately-flown trans-Mars injection though, whether it's a SpaceX Starship mission or an Impulse Space robotic lander flying on a Terran-R booster. Which team are you rooting for?
*...unless the furtive glare is discreetly sustained somehow, which you'd also need to specify, like "she glared furtively at him from behind the drapes the entire time he was addressing her family."
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