We shoild stop calling tourist or commercial space flights "missions".
Title says it all. I just watched Blue Origin land a bunch of rich space tourists and it’s being called a successful “mission”. IMO trying to massage egos of the vendor and participants as having something greater than an exclusive joyride with no greater purpose than to have personal bragging rights.
I'm going on a mission to Las Vegas!
Good. Those heathens need to hear the word of God
The rate at which billionaires are doing incredibly dangerous things is far too low.
Normalize titanic tours
High cost, high risk activities should require a non-refundable insurance purchase that can be used for cleanup should something go wrong, environmental offsets, and any other unexpected costs.
Hell, private rocket launches should have to prepay cleanup costs.
There are few things more useless than arguing over language. The problem with our billionaire space race isn't the branding.
Some people act like the editors of the dictionary can bend reality like the force, Green Lantern ring, and the Infinity Stones all rolled into one.
If you can’t influence people with word choice, why have people been doing It for centuries?
mission(n.) 1590s, "a sending abroad" (as an agent)
…
General sense of "that for which one is sent or commissioned" is from 1670s; meaning "that for which a person or thing is destined" (as in man on a mission, one's mission in life) is by 1805.
Meaning "dispatch of an aircraft on a military operation" (by 1929, American English)
was extended to spacecraft flights (1962), hence, mission control "team on the ground responsible for directing a spacecraft and its crew" (1964).
At this rate the up down motion and the penetration of the tip into the outer rim is so basic and over done, they may as well call it missionary.
I like the idea of something like cruises. A voyage.
They are literally strapped to enough explosives to kill them many times over. It may not require any skill, but it is certainly dangerous.
driving a car isn't a mission
Isn't that also true of anyone taking a regular commerical flight on an airliner? There's plenty explosive fuel in there to kill someone too
Much less dangerous, certainly, but I wouldn't count the engine as a reason for it being a "mission" unless the mission is testing that engine
Is skydiving a mission? Is deep sea diving? Those are dangerous, but are as much novelties as these space flights.
I don't think it's just bragging rights. I think it's to figure out potential issues with transportation and colonization.