Don’t be silly. Nuclear pulse rocketry is very well understood from an engineering perspective, the forces it generates are easily managed, and the radiation it produces easily shielded for.
Without a doubt it’s by far the most practical candidate for sending manned expeditions to the nearby stars.
Words like “manned”, “no-man’s land”, and “mankind” are derived all the way back to proto Germanic “mann” through to old English, which meant “person” or “human”. Mistaking it as gendered is like mistaking “history” as gendered because it has “his” in it.
Let's not beat around the bush. There is inherent sexism in our vocabulary. The word "man" did uniquely mean "human" in the old English (and the words wæpman and wifman meant male human and female human, respectively), but it doesn't anymore. In the same way that males aren't the defacto representatives of the species, the word man should not refer to the species and the sex at the same time.
By the way, the verb to man, as in to man the decks, comes from military and nautical contexts, which used to be male-only occupations. To continue to use the verb "man" in that context is just unnecessary baggage.
> Let's not beat around the bush. There is inherent sexism in our vocabulary.
Yes there absolutely is. That doesn’t mean we should knee jerk react to things without any actual understanding of them. Over time, words like mankind will be used less and less and become more anachronistic as our language evolves. But that is not the same as them being, in actuality, sexist and definitely doesn’t warrant sarcastic comments about there being no women on board due to the word being used.
> The word "man" did uniquely mean "human" in the old English (and the words wæpman and wifman meant male human and female human, respectively), but it doesn't anymore.
But they both do. “Wer” survives in werewolf and wif survives in Wife. Just because the originals did not survive, it doesn’t mean that all words derived from them didn’t as well. Mann did not survive, but it doesn't mean all words derived from it didn't as well.
I choose not to use words like mankind and manned in my writing and they already feel a bit anachronistic, but it just strikes me as petty to try and “call out” other people for using words that are perfectly acceptable.
What's acceptable is subjective. What should be accepted is subjective too.
Languages, just like software (both are symbolic systems), require maintenance. If either is used without conscious intent, it accumulates debt. We know very well that technical debt can be a PITA.
Clearly discussing propulsion methods of going to another planet is less important that percieved sexism of vocabulary. So what of it? Does it help us get to Mars faster?
Could you please stop with this ideological political activism? There is no inherent sexism in any language, ancient historical origin of the words isn't carried over to modern meaning, semantics of the words and doesn't create any bias against women or men. Meaning is created by mass media, people, world around you through propagandistic rhetorics. If you hang out with someone expressing "sexist" attitude or exposed to them through media, it really doesn't matter what words they use to call things they want to be for men or for women, you will still develop "sexist" associations, for example, you still won't consider babysitting a manly task, no matter how politically correct gender-neutral it is called.
I was replying to a comment whose parent said anything sent would end up as soup. The joke might’ve been bad, but it certainly is on the reader for not seeing that obvious connection.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion