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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
by valuearb 6y ago
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.
- ewindal 6y agoClearly beign silly isn’t appreciated.
- nkrisc 6y agoWith only text to go on, your joke has to be pretty good to not be mistaken for an, shall we say, "uninformed" comment.
- ewindal 6y agoI 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.
- jonplackett 6y agoI got your joke even if no-one else did.
- Jaruzel 6y ago> manned expeditions staffed expeditions...? crewed expeditions...? Unless you are not planning on sending any women?
- bitcharmer 6y agoFrom Oxford dictionary: manned /adjective/ (of an aircraft or spacecraft) having a human crew. "a manned mission to Mars" is even given as an example use.
- Jaruzel 6y agoIn the same way we're removing master/slave and terms like 'blacklist' and 'whitelist' we should also take the opportunity to remove the de-facto sexism in our language. Just because the definition is in the dictionary, doesn't mean it can't be updated.
- valuearb 6y agoWho is we?
- jk700 6y agoCould 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.
- 542354234235 6y agoWords 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.
- dmos62 6y agoLet'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.
- vagrantJin 6y agoClearly 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?
- 542354234235 6y ago> 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.