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.

  • Mellow@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    history of the word mission

    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).