Talk:List of human spaceflights

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[edit] Naming and organisation of these pages

1. "List of human spaceflights" reads slightly oddly to me. Wouldn't "List of manned spaceflights" be better?

2. Is there any particular reason why the list is split the way it is? If the list must be split for page size reasons then I feel it would be more logical to split into decades. So, "List of manned spaceflights, 1960s", "List of manned spaceflights, 1970s" etc.

Any objections? Matt 23:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC).


Response by BuffaloChip97 17:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Human spaceflight is used as a PC term. Women have been flying in space regularly since 1983.

2. I thought division points seemed to arbitrary. I am not opposed to splitting the list by decade.

  • Yes, I realise that "human spaceflight" is intended to be PC, but is it really necessary? It sounds most unnatural to me, conjuring up images of "humans" being projected into space like a human cannonball. In this post-PC-gone-mad day and age will anyone really be offended by the (to me) much more natural term "manned spaceflight"? Surely it's obvious that it includes women? Matt 20:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC).
    • Just as postscript, I think that "human spaceflight" reads OK when used as a general concept - in phrases such as, for example, "the history of human spaecflight". What sounds odd to me are references to "a human spacflight", "list of human spaceflights" etc., as we have here. Matt 21:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page reorganisation

Since no-one has objected above, I have re-split these lists into decades. Hopefully I have not broken anything; for the record I created a one-off user account "Human spaceflights reorg", and the record of changes made is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Human_spaceflights_reorg. I have not changed "human" to "manned" (as I was tempted to) because this is potentially contentious, and because there are other articles that also use "human" in the title. Matt 13:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC).

[edit] "manned" flights vs. flights "with human crews"

I suggest (and have edited this page to relect) use of the term "with human crews." Although this may seem overly verbose, it is both politically and factually correct, without being entirely too cumbersome for use in an encyclopedia. (I assume all members of X-15 flight crews were of masculine gender, and thus retained the term "manned" in that context. ;-) Sdsds 06:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)