Talk:Shenzhou spacecraft

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I never know 舟 can be translated as Mechanism!!! Where does this translation come from? 67.117.82.5 23:54, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"manned" may be in common usage, but is inherantly sexist. Why deliberately choose a gender-specific word when there is at least one (and probably more) non-gender specific alternative available? rlandmann

"manned" isn't gender-specific, otherwise we'd also see "womanned missions" being referred to. It's also the more commonly used term for these sorts of things, so I think it's quite reasonable to stick to using that in Wikipedia. Bryan

"manned" is derived from the German, "mensch" meaning people or folk. You could used "person" alternatively maybe also "persdaughter". Incidentally what is your justification for claiming that a genbder specifc word was chosen deliberatelY ping 06:58, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Derivation isn't the issue, as checking out practically any guide to non-gender specific language will tell you. As for the deliberate choice - the edit history of this page and a few other related ones seems to very strongly demonstrate the choice of a gendered word over a gender neutral word by many of the Wikipedians working in this area. I wonder how many of the claims here that "manned" isn't a gendered term are being made by women??? rlandmann

I don't think "manned" is sexist but I'm wondering what other non-gender choices are available? "Crewed" is clumsy and cannot accurately be applied to such cases as when all the people present are passengers. Of course in this case the astronaut was not a mere passenger and 'crew' works, but it's hardly as broad a word as "manned". "Personed" could work, perhaps, but sounds terrible. "Inhabited" might be used, but is clumsy, has a totally different nuance and implies (pretty strongly) a habitation. -- Tlotoxl 07:02, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Just because the letters "man" are in the word "manned" does not make the word inherently sexist. See the history section of Non-sexist_language. Also I agree completely that the word "crewed" is a clumsy alternative. Let's face it, nobody outside of sexist circles says "an uncrewed mission" -- Alex.tan 13:51, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

No, the letters "man" do not make a word sexist, but when those three letters are used to mean "a member of the human species" many (including, obviously myself) feel that they are. As for "nobody" outside "sexist circles" (whatever that means) using the term - NASA does, as Googling will quickly verify... rlandmann

Just because NASA has used the word "crewed" before doesn't make it right. As Googling will also tell you, the word "manned" appears in more than 1.5 million web pages, whereas "crewed" only appears in about 150,000 web pages.

In fact, since you brought it up, Googling within the NASA site for incidences of the word "manned" (46000 hits) vs the incidence of the word "crewed" (630 hits) shows NASA much prefers the word "manned" over the word "crewed". -- Alex.tan 14:26, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

At no point did I claim that it's the only term that NASA uses, nor the most common term that NASA uses. However, the results are skewed by the fact that there's an incredible weight of historical material that uses the older term. I think it's significant that the programme is now referred to as human spaceflight.

"Crewless mission" would be more felicitous than "uncrewed mission", if the point is insisted upon (although there is a subtle change of emphasis between 'unmanned' and 'crewless'). But essentially, I'm with Tlotoxl and Alex.tan about crewed & uncrewed sounding clumsy and unnatural. Which is more offensive: "manned" to women, or "crewed" to the English language? Hajor 14:24, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The link to "China's manned space programme" should probably redirect to "Space program in China".

And while we are discussing whether to use the term crewed or manned, China now has the single most advance space ship in use. While we of the democratic world debate trivial matters the communists are leading they way into the next century. Nice.

The Chinese are leading the way into the 22nd century already? Cool! But somehow, I doubt that many 22nd-century spacecraft will look like the 1970s-era Soyuz. Shenzhou may be the newest spacecraft to carry people into space, but one could argue that SpaceShipOne is the most advanced. Or either one of them could turn out to be a technological dead end. It's really up to history to make judgements like that.

Actually, I think the success of the Soyuz design is due in large part to the fact that it isn't cutting-edge. The Russians have been building and flying Soyuz for a long time, and have found and corrected many of the design flaws. It's a mature design with an impressive track record. By contrast, the space shuttle is still an experimental design, not an operational one (according to retired astronaut John Young -- see this article).

In any event, the democratic world has enough manpower -- sorry, human resources -- to develop new spacecraft and debate trivial matters at the same time. I'm certainly not qualified to help with the former task, so I'll have to concentrate on the latter one. Pat Berry 19:55, 1 November 2005 (UTC)