The Outdated Language of Space Travel
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series reflecting on the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years later.
Half a century ago, there was only one kind of astronaut in the United States. Men launched atop rockets to space. Men maneuvered landers down to the surface of the moon. Men guided spacecraft safely home. From start to finish, they were at the controls. So it makes sense that the effort to send people to orbit and beyond was called “manned” spaceflight.
But when Peggy Whitson hears someone call the spaceflight program “manned” today, she can’t stifle her physical reaction.
“I cringe a little bit,” Whitson says.
The terminology is simply no longer accurate, and Whitson, a former astronaut at NASA, is just one example why. Whitson served as commander on two missions to and . But as the country commemorated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing last week, the obsolete language cropped up in discussions about the modern American spaceflight program and its future, in , (some of which were edited quietly ), and elsewhere.
