Manned, Unmanned, and Everything in Between

The first U.S. woman astronauts were selected in 1978. From left to right, they are: Shannon Lucid, who lived on board the Mir space station for 188 days in 1996; Rhea Seddon, a medical doctor who flew two Spacelab life sciences missions; Kathryn Sullivan, the first U.S. woman spacewalker; Judith Resnik, an electrical engineer who perished in the Challenger accident; Anna Fisher, world's first mother in space and the oldest active astronaut; and Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space. Image credit: NASA

The debate over meaningful gender-neutral descriptors for what were once commonly called "manned spaceflight" and "unmanned spaceflight" seems never to end. That's because it is an important issue and we have yet to find satisfactory replacement terms. Various alternatives have been put forward - I generally go with "piloted" and "automated" - but all have their problems.

Spaceflight is not as it was in 1961, when the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center - today's Johnson Space Center - was created. Machines have become far more capable than they were and, as missions have become more complex, they have taken on many responsibilities that would once have fallen to an astronaut.

This is not at all a new thing: from the time of its very first flight in April 1981, the Space Shuttle was a robot during launch and reentry. It could, in fact, have flown without a crew; Rockwell proposed automated Orbiters as early as the 1970s. A Shuttle Commander told me once that the only thing the crew absolutely had to do during reentry and landing was to lower the landing gear. That, of course, could have been automated.

The point here is that the line between "manned" and "unmanned" has long since become blurred. Furthermore, it looks set to become increasingly blurry.

Engineers have offered up plans to place humans in Mars orbit, where they would teleoperate complex robots on the surface. Others have proposed passenger spacecraft without human pilots for routine flights to low-Earth orbit. Some spacecraft will fly with a crew or without - in the latter instance, bearing cargo instead of people - with no substantial alterations in their design. We will see space outposts on other worlds and at handy locations in open space that operate automatically or through teleoperations most of the time and are only occasionally "manned."

Let's get down to brass tacks: we can expend a lot of energy creating new terms to replace "manned" and "unmanned." However, most of the terms we come up with are already obsolete because of technological advances which make no mission wholly manned in the sense that humans are the only ones in the driver's seat.

"Unmanned" seems a peculiar term now because unmanned spacecraft far outnumber those that carry astronauts. It seems to imply that spacecraft without astronauts are less significant than spacecraft with astronauts, and that's arguably false. Perhaps we should instead say "automated" for wholly unmanned spacecraft and "semi-automated" for manned spacecraft. Unfortunately, even wholly unmanned spacecraft are in fact "semi-automated." They take remote commands from humans.

I think I have come up with a system of descriptors which is accurate. It is also gender-neutral.

What if we call every spacecraft that can carry people "habitable"? A habitable spacecraft carrying humans would be "inhabited." A habitable spacecraft operating without humans on board would be "uninhabited."

Turning now to robotic systems: what if we call every spacecraft or rover designed to operate without a crew on board a "partner" or a "colleague"? Cassini is our partner in the exploration of Saturn. The Curiosity Mars rover is our colleague in the exploration of Aeolus Mons.

We can try this out. A habitable outpost at Earth-moon L1 might spend much of its time uninhabited. Occasionally a partner spacecraft - for example, an observatory at Earth-Sun L2 - might be directed by humans on Earth to report to the habitable outpost. Before it arrived, an inhabited habitable spacecraft - perhaps Orion - would reach the outpost, which would then become inhabited. They would arrive ahead of the observatory so that habitable spacecraft thrusters and outgassing would not damage the fragile observatory.

The astronauts would change out instruments and make repairs to the observatory partner spacecraft using teleoperated partner repair robots assigned to the inhabited outpost. The same partner robots would keep the outpost in good shape during periods when it was uninhabited. Servicing complete, the observatory partner spacecraft would move away, then the astronauts would return to Earth, leaving the habitable outpost once again uninhabited.

Astronauts in Mars orbit on board a habitable spacecraft could direct colleague rovers on Mars to assemble and bury (for radiation protection) a habitable outpost. Some of the astronauts might then board a habitable lander and descend to the surface. It would land a safe distance away from the uninhabited habitable outpost and the colleague rovers so that its descent engines would not stir up rocks and dust that might damage them. The astronauts would then leave the habitable lander and inhabit the habitable outpost. They would probably give their colleague rovers checkups and carry out any needed repairs.

Perhaps a colleague rover would be designed to be converted into a habitable rover, and the astronauts would inhabit it and drive it over the surface. At night, astronauts in orbit might continue to direct the habitable/colleague rover as their compatriots slept on board. When the astronauts on board woke in the morning and stepped outside, the rover might continue to serve as a colleague rover directed from Mars orbit, following them as they hiked over martian landscapes.

As I believe this illustrates, one can imagine many combinations of functions that can be summed up using these descriptors. I think therefore that these terms - variations on "habitable" and "colleague/partner" - are meaningfully descriptive of real and potential 21st-century space systems and are also acceptably gender-neutral. What do you think?

Related Posts

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part One

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part Two

A Forgotten Pioneer of Mars Resource Utilization (1962-1963)

Re-Purposing Mercury: Recoverable Space Observatory (1964)

After EMPIRE: Using Apollo Technology to Explore Mars and Venus (1965)

Earth-Approaching Asteroids as Targets for Exploration (1978)

Sally Ride's Mission to Mars (1987)

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