FYI the official term for space missions with people on them is “crewed”, not “manned.” The term “manned spaceflight” has been outmoded for decades and NASA’s style guide has used “crewed” or “human” spaceflight (as opposed to “robotic”) since at least 2006. www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The Outdated Language of Space Travel

“Manned” spaceflight doesn’t make sense anymore.

I never really thought about it but this is a good call out as I'm guessing a lot of people are similar to me and hadn't made that connection.

Unnecessarily gendered language is weird, and worth fixing, but habits die hard. I still find myself using it often without meaning to. (I'm male, for reference) Absurdly enough, the thing that helped break me of the "unmanned" habit was playing a zillion hours of Kerbal Space Program XD

Thank you for this. I'd heard the distinction and it's something I was peripherally aware of, but hadn't actually investigated/thought about much. Laying it out so clearly will hopefully mean my brain will absorb it properly and I'll remember this in the future (if it ever comes up).

That's a fact I really needed, thanks!

I'm in the mapping business, and we use drones a lot. The preferred term is "UAS", for "uncrewed aerial system". Gotta love it when you clean up the language but get to keep your acronym.

Reminds me that several years ago at another editor’s request I went through all the Wikipedia articles on NASA crewed flights and updated all the mentions of “manned”. Quite a few people seemed pleased

As NASA likes to say, if you say you're used to "manned" and it's too hard to change to this new thing now, we've been using "crewed" since before there were iPhones.

Thank you! I keep getting told that I’m wrong, but when that happens, I’ve just pointed at the NASA style guide. If they come back, I’ve said, “If you still have a problem, well then you still have a problem (and not a human spaceflight one).”

In "Carrying the Fire", Michael Collins already decried the popular terms "capsule" and "blast-off", terms which are still in use over 50 years later. News writers never learn.

Yeah, it’s really not hard, & shouldn’t be controversial, to be more precise & up-to-date in our language. It’s not rocket science, after all. 😏