NASA can escape gravity, but not political correctness.

The Atlantic writes that when Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who currently spent more time in outer space than any other American man or woman, hears someone describe “spaceflight [as] ‘manned’ today, she can’t stifle her physical reaction.”

“I cringe a little bit,” she tells The Atlantic.

To her, ‘manned’ is a sexist term since it implies that a male was piloting a spacecraft. Instead, she preferred the term ‘human’ and ‘crewed’. 

Additionally, now-retired astronaut Pamela Melroy agrees and claimed that after a traveling or training with only female colleagues, her male counterparts “out on the flight line would tease me that it was an unmanned mission”.

And according to NASA Spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz, the space agency has listened by gradually shifting its use of terminology accordingly. Here’s how the internal style guide describes the word ‘manned’:

manned, unmanned. Avoid use. In many cases, the distinction is unnecessary or implied. Substitute terms such as autonomous, crewed, human, piloted, unpiloted, robotic, remotely piloted.’

“Now if we could just get others to follow suit,” Schierholz lamented to The Atlantic.

However, these revisionist efforts ignore the fact that “manned” refers to a “human” or “mankind”, not someone who identifies as a male person. Ironically, those who claim to want more ‘inclusiveness’ are quick to use words to divide people.

Sure, Americans can argue over the ‘right’ terminology, but NASA didn’t win the space race by being politically incorrect. 

At this point, it’s a bit surprising that no one has defended that animals, such as dogs and spiders, launched into outer space are also excluded from the word ‘manned’. To the possible displeasure of radical leftists, the term ‘crewed’, ‘piloted’, or whatever new gender-neutral term imaginable would also be inaccurate since those animals did not actually pilot the spacecraft themselves.

So if a human pilot ‘piloted’ a spacecraft, would a dog have ‘dogged’ a spacecraft? Maybe PETA can step in for animals on this one by fixing the language.

Those seeking to escape leftist globalism on earth will be disappointed to find that any future space colony will first be ‘crewed’ by the overly political correct. Maybe the environmentalists were correct in saying that people tend to ruin everything wherever they go, which would be outer space in this case.

On a more historical note, if NASA administrators spent all that time and effort in the 1960’s educating their astronauts and the public to use politically correct terminology, would they have time and energy to put the first astronauts on the moon?

Even the Soviets, as leftist as they can be, were level-headed enough to actually put the first woman into space instead of day-dreaming about gender-neutral words for their propaganda.