Astronyms, part 7: Private Space Vessels and Future Probables

This is part of this series of posts on the history of spacecraft naming.

At the time that I publish this, there is only one privately-funded spacecraft that meets my standards for being a real, actual thing. It's always tricky writing about the future, because you'll inevitably be wrong. This is why I've held off on this part of the series for years now. But we've reached the point where some clear progress is visible just over the horizon and it should be a busy 2 or 3 years. Even if only half of these make it to space, that's still a huge spurt. I'll update this as history unfolds. Hey, Future Me, how's that history looking so far?

It's also weird that it happens to be convenient to stick the future possibles in the same post as the commercial vessels. I'm not suggesting this should be a default pairing, we just happen to be sitting at a point in history where I can mention both in the same breathe and be sort of half accurate.

There is currently only one example of a non-government funded spacecraft. It's arguably not all that important to draw this public/private dichotomy, but you could argue similarly against a state-of-origin system of organising my list. Even in the non-capitalist states, there were companies building rockets, not government officials. Every single NASA launch is, in some sense, a commercial exercise for someone. And the companies publicised as most independent, like Scaled Composites and SpaceX, use various government-derived expertise and resources. It happens to be handy to me, from a writing structure perspective, to follow historical distinctions, but ultimately physics is all that really separates one vessel from another.

SpaceShipOne
(Space plane. In space service 24 June 2004 to 4 October 2004)

SpaceShipOne

Definitions are pretty important when talking about SpaceShipOne. Operationally, it's very similar to the X-15, and it similarly made it to space officially, but only suborbitally, by a tight margin (though less tight than X-15). It was also privately funded and built, but still within the US, so it's not too awkward to file it among American stuff. So, yes, technically, by some definitions, it's of socio-historical interest. But I think it's even more interesting from a pure engineering perspective. It's also the root of the USS Rutan's registry number. It's only a pity that Rutan himself tarnished his otherwise lovely heritage by becoming a cranky climate change denier.

It's not a great name, but it is a little memorable, at least. It may have been Rutan's first spaceship, but it was far from the first ever, so it's not the most inspired or appropriate name. The unconventional lack of spaces between words annoys some, and is (not unreasonably) cocked up by others, making it things like 'Space Ship One' or 'Spaceship One'. Personally, I look forward to the development of some new carbonyl-carrying compound called spaceshipone.

The unusual aircraft that carried it up to launch altitude, White Knight, had a more interesting name, though it appears to have been given that name mainly because it was painted mostly white, which is still slightly uninspired. White Knight was later renamed White Knight One, when it was decided that SpaceShipTwo would be carried into the air by a White Knight Two. I can appreciate the symmetry, but I'm less joyous about changing names after the thing's not even carrying SpaceShipOne anymore. The inconsistency with the spaces between words also rubs me the wrong way too, but these are nitpicks.

SpaceShipOne's flight profile was pretty similar to the X-15's suborbital flights. It got carried to altitude by White Knight, then was released and fired its rocket, which lifted it up over 100km. Then it fell down again. The genius part here was the wing-feathering system, which hinged the whole tail boom assembly vertical, essentially turning the vessel's angle of attack at right angles, so that it would do a slow, controlled belly flop into the atmosphere, rather than a fast (and hot) nose-first dive. This meant it didn't need such crazy re-entry heat protection. Then it transforms back and lands as a normal glider. Although it was designed to be able to carry up to three people, per the X-Prize rules, it only ever carried a single pilot at a time.

The one and only SpaceShipOne flew several glide tests, as well as three suborbital flights, before being retired.

And then we have the future probables, in order of, as best I can tell, scheduled first space flight. If 100% of them make it into space, then the number of different spaceship classes on my list will have increased (from the 17 total in 2012) by nearly 50%, in approx. 10% as much time as it took to create the first 17 designs.

Dragon V2
(Drop ship. In space service 30 May 2020 to present)

Dragon V2

[EDIT: Assumed start date changed to 2017 and moved to after CST-100, because it's contractually necessary that they go into space - with people, my criterion for entry on this list - in that order.]

[EDIT 2: Nope, turns out that's not contractually required after all, so it's still up to NASA to decide who gets the first crewed flight opportunity.]

Dragon V2 is the people-carrying cousin to what is now sometimes called Dragon V1 (though most people still call that one simply Dragon, and there are actually two variants of it, one for NASA and one for other users). For the sake of clarity, I will add the V1 suffix here. The smaller Dragon V1 is a pure cargo carrier, similar in function to Russia's Progress, and both have been used for space station resupply. But from the start, there was talk of a people-carrying Dragon. The initial concept art for it looked barely different from the cargo version, but when the actual form of it was finally revealed, Dragon V2 ended up looking quite a lot bigger and sleeker. It consists of two modules: The capsule, which contains nearly all of the vessel's systems, including thrusters, and the 'trunk', which is a disposable cargo bay with solar panels on the outside, similar to the Dragon V1's trunk section.

[EDIT: Note that emerging common usage, both from Musk and the media, is the informal name Crew Dragon, as opposed to Cargo Dragon.][Further, it is now becoming more common to see it called Dragon 2, as opposed to the cargo Dragon 1, with the V cut out. Again, to avoid confusion, I'm sticking to the V1/V2 labels in this post, for now.]

Dragon V2 would be just another space condom if it weren't intended to be re-used for multiple flights per capsule. It will be able to land by landing rockets and/or parachute, and then should be patched up and relaunched, perhaps 10 times each. By my definition, that shifts it into the drop ship category. There are parallel plans to make the Falcon launch rockets partly reusable too, presumably because of the introduction of the Contracts system. Dragon V2 was chosen together with CST-100 to carry astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, and it will be interesting to see if it sees any other use. Long-term plans have spoken of another descendant of Dragon V1, called Red Dragon, for a Mars sample return mission, and there are even vaguer suggestions of some sort of enlarged Dragon variant as the mobile homes used by Mars One.

[It has since been decided to delete the propulsive landing option and rely solely on parachute landings, in order to keep Dragon V2 simpler and ready sooner, for NASA's crew needs. Consequently, the use of a Dragon V2 as the basis for Red Dragon has also been ruled out, and the replacement for Red Dragon will instead be based on the ITS design.]

The origin of the name was apparently the song "Puff the Magic Dragon", which was somehow a reference to how critics thought the spacecraft would fail to ever materialise; I kind of get it, but it's not the most obvious leap. Still, it's a pretty cool, traditionally mythological name; it works. The people-carrying version was not originally going to be called Dragon V2; instead, early references to it used the name DragonRider, which I think would have been much cooler (if oddly spaced). As Red Dragon also illustrates, it's quite easy to construct themed variations around the basic Dragon name, so to instead fall back on mere numbered variants seems lazy and uninspired. V2, really close to V-2, also brings to mind the unfortunate military origins of space rocketry. I find it hard to believe that a whole group of professional rocket designers weren't aware of that, so I have to assume it's at least a partially intentional reference. There has been no indication that individual Dragon V2s will get unique names. I have not yet found any clear indication of how the Falcon rocket family got its name.

[EDIT: I just found out, the Falcon rockets are named after the Millennium Falcon. So it's broadly the same sort of name-origin as Enterprise and Voyager (and Columbia(d), kind of), and pleases me similarly.]

[EDIT: Musk continues to lean on scifi roots for his ship naming, with landing barge-drones named after ships from Ian M. Banks novels. Being nautical and not astronautical, that's not strictly within the scope of my series, but still fun to know.]

[EDIT: There is apparently a campaign to have the first crewed Dragon V2 named Serenity, similar to the campaign that got a shuttle named Enterprise.]


 The first successful launch and docking of a crewed Crew Dragon began on 30 May 2020. The crew waited til they were in orbit before announcing the vessel is named Endeavour, after the retired Space Shuttle that they both first went to space on together.

[EDIT: Adding New Shepard]

New Shepard
(Drop ship. Due to begin space service maybe 2020ish? in 2021?)

I admit I'd skimmed over articles about New Shepard while I was originally writing this post, and assumed it would never amount to anything, mainly because so little has been released about it. Looking more closely, that may simply be because it's been kept very secret, for some reason. Turns out they've already built and tested quite a lot for this design, though nothing in space yet, so it's potentially quite interesting. Unfortunately, it's hard to say anything specific, because there's close to  nothing known about it.

The basic design is a two-module thing, vaguely in the Gemini arrangement, but with a stubby dome-ended sausage shape that makes it look more like a dildo than any other crewed spacecraft I know of [seriously, look]. The really big, uncrewed propulsion module serves as the complete launcher, from ground to apogee of a strictly sub-orbital flight. The stated function would be space tourism and quick research. Both modules then make powered landings, much like the Dragon V2/Falcon first stage combo aim to, though the Crew Capsule module also seems to have parachutes for emergencies. A scrap of a suggestion has been revealed that a New Shepard-derived, biconic crew module could use a totally new two-stage launcher for orbital flights, with the first stage and crew capsule recovered, even more similar to the Dragon V2 plan. However, I'd like to see the initial New Shepard working before giving much credence to plans for the step after it.

The name New Shepard is a reference to Alan Shepard of Mercury 3 and Apollo 14. I like that well enough, though the 'New' bit throws me every time I look at it, as if there ought to have been a previous vessel, the old Shepard (in the fashion of New York or New Berlin). They had a similar theme of historic rocket-related people when they named the initial uncrewed test rig for the Crew Module's powered landing system Goddard, after Robert Goddard. I'm not clear if Goddard was strictly an in-atmosphere test unit, or if it represented an earlier design for the Crew Capsule, but it was definitely more of a curvy cone, like a featureless Dragon V2, than the current dome shape. Two subsequent test units appear to have gone unnamed. The PM-2 test version of the Propulsion Module was destroyed in a test flight. The next one, a full-scale Crew Module without known name or code (I'm going to put my bet on CM-3?) [EDIT: sort of half-officially termed the "first developmental test flight"], was used for a successful launch abort test. I don't normally focus here on test units and boilerplates, but they did seem to set it up in this case by naming Goddard individually, so I'm curious if that practice stopped then, or merely waits to be learned among all their other secretive secrets.

[EDIT: It's very possible I'm getting something wrong here, because in this post, Blue Origin talk about still having Propulsion Modules PM-2 and PM-3 under construction after the first developmental test flight, with an implication that that flight used PM-1. I'm not certain how this fits together with the earlier destroyed PM-2 test unit.]

[EDIT: The launcher/capsule combos are being numbered sequentially, so far from NS1 to NS3, with NS4 (the first intended to carry humans) under construction. NS3 has been named (seeming only from its second launch onwards) the RSS H.G. Wells, after the scifi author, with RSS presumably standing for reusable space ship?]

[EDIT: It's since come out that successors to New Shepard - an orbital New Glenn and an extra-orbital New Armstrong, each named after other US astronauts - will primarily be launchers, not crew vessels, though they may have crew modules mounted on them.]


CST-100 Starliner
(Drop ship. Due to begin space service by 2017 2019)

CST-100 Starliner

CST-100 won the greater share of NASA's space station people-ferry business, with the remainder going to Dragon V2. The whole point of CST-100 is be a short-range, large-crew Apollo clone, with a conical crew module leading a stubby cylindrical service module. Like Dragon V2, each CST-100 crew module should be reusable up to 10 times, though they will land exclusively via parachute. They really have just recycled the Apollo design for this one. Unsurprisingly, development of CST-100 was ahead of both Dragon V2 and Dream Chaser at the time that NASA announced their final selection, and yet they've retained the latest date estimate for their first test flight.

The name does not satisfy me. CST stands for Crew Space Transportation, which is immediately far too literal for my tastes, and the 100 is a reference to the 100km Karman Line. I don't see why that's there, except perhaps to give the illusion of a heritage of 99 previous designs? As alluded to under the Dream Chaser entry, much has been made of the safety and reliability of the Apollo heritage, so I presume they're trying to keep people focused on that aspect as much as possible. If individual CST-100s are getting unique names, none have been revealed yet.

[EDIT: The official name of this one was changed to CST-100 Starliner in September 2015. Starliner is a name intended to reflect Boeing's commercial airliner names, the 307 Stratoliner and 787 Dreamliner. I don't think that's much of a real naming heritage, but rather a contrived marketing decision, considering the dozens of Boeing airliners between the 307 and 787 that had either a different naming scheme or, more frequently, no name at all. (It's also questionable whether they noticed the L-1649 Starliner aircraft made by sometime-competitors, Lockheed, in the '50s.) This fits very well with my earlier interpretation of the CST-100 code as an attempt to paint Boeing's design as tried and true, a venerable tradition, far more trustworthy than any of these young Johnny-Launch-Latelys. Same marketing guys picked the name Starliner for it, I guess. That said, I do actually like the name Starliner. It's not inappropriate, especially for something intended for a routine, dull use like station ferrying, and it sounds kind of pretty, regardless of any cynicism in its origin. I'll actually be happier if they drop the silly CST-100 bit and start refering to it as simply the Starliner.]

[EDIT: The first uncrewed Starliner launch went poorly, with a software error burning off too much fuel to safely reach the ISS, as planned, and instead had to be landed early. This has led some to dub it things like the Starliner MAX, after the Boeing 737 MAX that also recently suffered (much more fatally) from software problems. A different capsule will make the first crewed Starliner flight, but this same capsule will be reused (hopefully with fixed software) for the second crewed flight, and its first commander Sunita Williams, has announced that she has named the capsule Calypso, presumably after the nymph of Greek mythology, rather than the Caribbean music style after Jacques Cousteau's research vessel, fitting in with the Space Shuttle's naming theme of exploratory boats.]

CST-100 is supposed to be able to be launched using one of several rockets, including the same Atlas V as Dream Chaser, the same Falcon 9 as Dragon V2, and the same Delta IV (though perhaps not the Heavy) as Orion. They're not picky. The Delta rocket family got its name from its predecessor, the much more exciting Thor rockets, when the name of one variant, the Thor-Delta, mutated enough that the Thor part was dropped, leaving only the Delta. [EDIT: It has also been announced that the Starliner should be compatible with the proposed Vulcan rocket, which is unsurprising as Vulcan will be a unified hybrid of Atlas V and Delta IV systems. Vulcan got its name in a pretty stupid public voting process, where 3 pretty terrible names were proposed and none got much attention. So ULA decided to ride on Leonard Nimoy's coat-tails instead, throwing a 4th option in late, which apparently won. It's a good enough name for a rocket, though I foresee some confusion between the names Vulcan and Falcon, operating so close together.]

[EDIT: Adding Chinese modular space station.]

Tianhe or Tiangong 3? (Chinese modular space station)
(Space station. Due to begin space service in 2019)

Modular space station of uncertain name

Following the cancellation of the Tiangong 3 station (because Tiangong 2 was able to complete all of the goals of these smaller precursor stations), CNSA has decided to progress towards assembling its first modular station. But its name remains unclear. As part of the Tiangong program, it may become Tiangong 3, in the same way that the Salyut and Almaz stations were lumped together under the Salyut program. Or the whole station may be named after its core module, Tianhe (meaning "Harmony of the Heavens"), in the same way that Mir was named after the Mir core module. Or it may get some totally other name, not yet announced.

The layout of this station is very like that of Mir. Its Tianhe module in particular is extremely similar in appearance to the later Salyut modules, especially the Mir core module and ISS's Zvezda module.


SpaceShipTwo
(Space plane. Due to begin space service in 2015 2016 2020?)

SpaceShipTwo

Currently undergoing a much more extensive series of atmospheric test flights than SpaceShipOne had, SpaceShipTwo is clearly a scaled-up version of its predecessor, designed to operate in the same way, using the same technology, but now also with a bunch of passengers aboard. A larger carrier plane, White Knight Two, fills exactly the same role as White Knight One did. All the published claims talked about SpaceShipTwo getting people into space by 2014, a decade after its predecessor, but it seems unlikely it'll meet that deadline, and emphasis has since been shifted towards ensuring safety, which I approve of.

There's not a lot more to say about the class name, other than that it at least gives a clear sense of the design heritage. More interesting is that they're building more than one of this design (and more than one of its carriers), so individual vehicle names are also a thing. The first two off the production line are named VSS Enterprise and VSS Voyager, direct references to the USS Enterprise and USS Voyager of Star Trek, but with VSS standing for Virgin SpaceShip. As a Trekkie, I'm in favour of these names being used, and Enterprise in particular has been used so often that one more can't really hurt; it'll be nice to finally get one into space. Voyager was also the name of one of Scaled Composites' most interesting aircraft, so they have some of their own connection to that one. [EDIT: See explanation of second vessel's renaming, below.] The current official plan is for 5 SpaceShipTwos to be built, so it'll be interesting to see what names the later ones get. Defiant doesn't quite seem to fit the commercial space tourist vibe.

[EDIT: VSS Enterprise has just been destroyed in a crash during a test flight. It never reached space.]

[EDIT: Some doubt has been cast on the second vehicle being named Voyager, perhaps complicated by the loss of Enterprise.] [A trademark application has triggered speculation that they might call it VSS Unity. I will comment on this if it is confirmed.] [The official unveiling of the completed vehicle confirmed that it is now officially named VSS Unity. I've read through all the speech transcripts from this event, and there is no clear explanation of the choice of name, beyond a vague sense of "hey, we should all get along and be groovy". I can't argue with the sentiment, but I do like my naming explanations more concrete than that. I notice the name is written as Un1ty on the actual nose of the vessel (compare with the I on Enterprise's nose), but this seems to be just artistic licence. All other official sources spell it with an I.] [The next two SpaceShipTwos in production are apparently currently nicknamed Etta and Artie, after Branson's grandchildren.]

The White Knight Twos also get unique names, with the first called VMS Eve, with VMS standing for Virgin Mothership, and Eve being Richard Branson's mother's name. The next is due to be called VMS Spirit of Steve Fossett, after the aviator with links to both Virgin and Scaled Composites, and in the same form as Spirit of St. Louis. A third is planned after that, and it seems a safe bet it will also be named after a person with company associations.


Orion
(Space condom or drop ship? Due to begin space service in 2021 2023)

Orion

As recently as 2 weeks ago, I was still ignorant enough that I couldn't tell any difference between CST-100 and Orion; I thought Orion had been completely cancelled along with the Constellation Program, and that CST-100 was simply a surviving proposal for Orion's design. Some elements of CST-100 may have come from Boeing's earlier Crew Exploration Vehicle bid to the Constellation Program that ultimately saw Orion selected instead, but that's where the relationship seems to end. I am uncertain to what extent both companies' partnership as the United Launch Alliance might have had any effect on these designs. While CST-100 is designed almost solely for space station shuttling, Orion is mainly intended as an explorer out far from Earth (though its official description does grudgingly accept that it could also be used as another station ferry, if nothing better is available).

The one thing they explicitly do have in common is an intentional recycling of Apollo's basic design, especially the conical command module. Orion has a more complicated-looking service module, which has learnt from Soyuz to add some solar panel wings, although even those are funny-looking umbrellas in early artwork, then replaced with the same windmill strips as the ATV cargo vessel, once that was announced as the new basis for the service module. With years of development still to come, and a much less clear end goal for it than Apollo had, the final design may still vary a lot.

The crew modules of CST-100 and Orion look externally very similar, when separate from their more distinct other components, especially in uncoloured diagrams, and the easiest way I've found to tell them apart so far is counting windows. CST-100 has a single, big, square window and some smaller round ones. Orion has two big, square, recessed forward windows and two smaller, square, sideways windows, more like those on the Apollo CM. Orion can then be distinguished from Apollo CM because Apollo had its access hatch (with its own small, round window) between the two forward windows, while Orion seems to have the forward windows close together and the access hatch around the side. Orion also has a ring of little indentations (for thrusters?) around the nose that both CST-100 and Apollo CM lack. [EDIT: Distinguishing between them has become a step trickier, as Orion has now gained a silverly looking extra layer of heat shielding, which makes it look even more similar to the silverly looking Apollo CMs that went beyond Earth orbit. The shape of the tile pattern underneath the metallic coat might still be visible, in good enough images, which may also help with distinguishing them.]

Orion was originally going to launch on the Ares family of rockets, but Ares was one of the many cancelled parts of Constellation. Instead, Orion willwas initially launch[ed] on the Delta IV Heavy, and then will launch on the planned (and hopefully eventually better named) Space Launch System rocket, a sort of kind of Ares replacement. [EDIT: It has now been formally proposed that the SLS be named the Cernan rocket, after the Gemini/Apollo astronaut. I'm really not sure why him, of all possible astronauts.]

The name Orion comes from the constellation Orion, a name shared with the Apollo 16 LM and still the only constellation I can reliably identify in the sky. That's nice and spacey enough, and it made more sense when it was part of Constellation. Perhaps they had a constellation naming theme planned out, with each vessel of the class named after a different one? Perhaps that's just my wishful thinking. The related Altair lander (a less obvious Apollo LM descendant) would have carried a similar astronomy theme with its name, before it was cancelled.

[EDIT: I should also point out that Orion has had two official bland, descriptive, abbreviated names too, neither of which I approve of. When it was first requested under Constellation, it - and competing designs - began as the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). When Constellation was cancelled, the Orion CEV was renamed the Orion MPCV, the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle, presumably to pretend it would be super useful for lots of stuff besides that lame exploration stuff that had just been cut from the budget. It made sense to distinguish between Apollo CSM and Apollo LM (though in hindsight, maybe one of them should have just had a totally different name from the start, like the Orion-Altair pair would have had), but since the Orion crew module isn't planned to pair up with another vessel design also called an Orion-something, it seems unnecessary to tack those extra messy letters to the end of a perfectly decent name.]

[EDIT: The first uncrewed, unnamed Orion has now successfully been to space and back once, which in a way puts it ahead of all the other future probables on this list so far. Even so, Orion is still unlikely to get a crew into space this decade.]

[EDIT: Adding Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.]

Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway
(Space station. Due to begin space service in 2023?)

(image penguin)

I'm intentionally going to leave details out of this one for now, because this lunar space station concept seems to be at a precarious design phase, when anything could change, and I've learned not to commit to future details here too prematurely. But the rough idea is that it will be a smaller ISS descendant, in an orbit near the Moon, allowing for some experience in deep space human exploration to be earned, and maybe even some boots on the Moon too, eventually.


This design concept had been floated by Europe, Russia and China for about a year, when the Americans latched onto it and decided it should mainly serve as a waystation to Mars, giving it the name Deep Space Gateway. When the name of this station was changed from the Deep Space Gateway to the even clunkier Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, the change was immediately mocked as unhelpful and unnecessary. I personally like the gateway metaphor, and I hope that's the only part of either name that sticks with the final design.

For a crew ferry, it is assumed the Orion will be the main ship for the job, initially, followed perhaps by a lunar version of Federatsia. If China is allowed to join this station project, its unnamed MPCV seems like a likely candidate for this role too. Dragon V2 is probably up for the flight, but currently lacks a sufficient booster to launch it that far - the now-cancelled lunar Dragon tourist flight would barely have reached, without capacity for complex flying within lunar orbit. And as far as I know, the short-ranged Starliner definitely won't make it.

Orel
(Space condom or drop ship? Due to begin space service in 2024)

Orel

Eventually, Soyuz will have to retire, right? Probably, who knows? Russia has had plans, on and off, to replace that venerable condom since at least the '80s, if not earlier. Will this one finally be the one to do it? Maybe. It's far too early to say. Initial plans look like a hybrid of traditional Russian and American space condom designs, with a roughly similar layout to Orion. It's supposed to be a reusable drop ship, probably.

The name Rus isn't official at all, it's little more than a rumour, but that's kind of unavoidable with a design that may or may not be abandoned and replaced. Officially, the design pictured here is called the Perspektivnaya Pilotiruemaya Transportnaya Sistema (Prospective Piloted Transport System). But that's boring, so I'm going to look at the name Rus instead. Rus' is interesting and complex, referring to a somewhat fluid historical region and the people thereof. Among many other things, it is the root of the word Russia, and so it fits well with the nationalisty pattern of Soviet and Russian spacecraft.[EDIT: In 2015, Energia made a big effort to distance the PPTS design from the name Rus, with a public naming contest that drew tens of thousands of votes. While it wasn't the most popular name by the public vote, the naming committee decided in early 2016 that the most appropriate name would be Federatsia (also transliterated by some as Federatsiya), which translates as federation, refering to the political structure of the Russian Federation, and I can see their point. Most directly, it continues the pattern of Soyuz, with the spacecraft name reflecting a direct link to the state that operates it, and less directly there's the broader theme of generally nationalist names that goes all the way back to Vostok. There is also talk in that second press release of naming individual vessels after the 80+ subjects (provinces, roughly) that make up the Federation, which would be an interesting change in Russian spacecraft naming. I think that's more likely to become a reality if Federatsia ends up being a reusable dropship. The obvious hurdle with that is that if each vessel flies 5 times (half the rumoured 10-flight maximum lifespan), you'd need around 400 flights to accommodate all of the subjects' names on one vessel each. If Federatsia could keep up the 4 flights/year that Soyuz has been pushed to, it'll take a century to fit them all in. The naming committee also said they prefered to save the more popular names (including Gagarin) for some future, unspecified vessel designs.]

[EDIT: In 2019, the name Federatsia was dropped in favour of Orel (also tranliterated by some as Oryol), meaning "eagle", for no reason that I've yet uncovered.]

Rus Federatsia Orel was originally going to be launched by a new Rus-M rocket, sticking to the Russian pattern of vessel and launcher sharing the same name. But Rus-M has been cancelled, and now the plan is to put Rus Federatsia Orel on top of an Angara A5 instead, breaking the pattern. Also a geographically-inspired name, the Angara is a river in Russia. [EDIT: It is also possible that Federatsia Orel could launch on the planned Soyuz-5 rocket.]

Gaganyaan
(Space condom. Due to begin space service in 2016 2024)

Gaganyaan

This is probably the least-discussed spacecraft on my list, partly because not much is known about it yet, as it was only recently announced. And yet, the plan is to have it actually in space relatively soon? We'll have to see. If successful, it will add India to the people-in-space-putting club. The design is described as being similar to the old Mercury, but if initial drawings and descriptions are accurate, it'll be closer to Gemini Apollo, with two three crew and a separate service module. It is, however, a fairly distinctive new shape.

I hope to fuck that I get to update this entry with a better name than Orbital Vehicle soon. [See edit below.] All other more creative options aside, India has rich and ancient mythologies to draw decent names from, so simply following the American/Chinese mythological naming pattern should be able to produce a better name than fucking mud-lame Orbital Vehicle. However, considering it will launch aboard a rocket named Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle mark III, I am not filled with confidence in their spacecraft-naming ambitions.

[EDIT: Without much fanfare, this one's actually progressed a lot further than I knew. An uncrewed crew module performed a suborbital test flight in December 2014. The final design (see diagram above) is a little stockier than I originally reported, with space for 3 crew, not just 2. The crew module now more closely resembles the shape of the Dragon V1, with a tiled surface that brings to mind Orion.]

[EDIT: Sometime in late 2018 (it snuck by my notice), the Orbital Vehicle was officially renamed the Gaganyaan, apparently translating directly as 'sky craft', so barely any change in literal meaning. I'm a little disappointed, since it's still so literal and boring. But at least it's not in English anymore?]

[EDIT: Replacing Interplanetary Transport System with BFR ship.]

BFR ship
(Space plane/dropship hybrid. Due to begin space service in 2024?)

BFR ship

Before the 2016 presentation of the name and design of ITS, the semi-formal term Mars Colonial Transport was used by SpaceX to discuss their vague idea for a Mars ship, but the informal code BFR was also already widely used. And when ITS was dropped in 2017, the new design inherited the BFR codename. So that's what it's called for now, pending some progress at some point. I think I need to write a whole post just on SpaceX's terrible names department.

Let there be no doubt, BFR does stand for Big Fucking Rocket. But since some people like to pretend that the perfectly harmless word "fuck" is harmful, it has also been variously identified as the Big Fricking Rocket, Big Fracking Rocket, Big Fat Rocket, Big F'ing Rocket, and (at least a little appropriately) Big Falcon Rocket. But it is Big Fucking Rocket, until it gets a real name.

[EDIT: Following yet another re-design in 2018, it now seems like ITS and BFR both just count as preliminary sketches of a system that is now due to be renamed by a naming contest. They're also redesignating the two halves of the design as the Starship and the Super Heavy. Starship seems a bit of a stretch, and it seems to be a marketing-driven choice. Super Heavy seems to be an attempt to link the booster name with the Falcon Heavy booster, though the two have little in common.]

Rather than rewriting my entry on ITS to reflect the changes towards BFR, I'm keeping the two separate here, as it's not yet clear if ITS will still also be introduced later on, as a larger complement or replacement, though I'm pretty sure the 2016 design won't recognisably continue. That said, the 2017 BFR design clearly borrows heavily from the earlier one. It's still a massive two-stage launcher/spacecraft combo, with a vertical landing booster, and a now-winged but still vertical landing ship or tanker. Those are the exact words Musk used to describe the three components: Booster, ship, tanker. The entire thing is supposed to be reusable, and they're talking (for what it's worth) of building thousands of them. The small delta wings on the ship or tanker sections technically slip it into the spaceplane category, but it would be totally impossible to land it aerodynamically, and much of the flight is still as a ballistic dropship. The whole system is shrunk down from ITS, but it's still huge.

One change relevant to this post is that the number of first stage engines has dropped from 42 to 31. This means the proposed name for the first vessel, Heart of Gold, no longer seems that relevant. It wasn't mentioned at all, but it now seems less likely that the first crewed BFR will be named Heart of Gold.

[EDIT: Adding OPSEK]

OPSEK (Russian orbital station)
(Space station. Due to begin space service in 2024)

(image penguin)

There has been a great deal of political and financial uncertainty around this possible space station, and I only list it here because some of its potential components are already in orbit. For almost a decade, Roscosmos has been talking about plans to detach several Russian elements of ISS, shortly before the non-Russian components are deorbitted, to form the foundation of a new modular station. Arguably, this would make it a continuation of ISS under a new name, rather than a wholly new station.

As plans change, so has the name given to the post-international Russian station. But international media have latched onto the term Orbital'nyj Pilotirujemyj Sborochno-Eksperimental'nyj Kompleks (OPSEK, or Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex).

[EDIT: Adding Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle]

Unnamed multi-purpose crew vehicle
(Space condom or drop ship? Due to begin space service in 2025?)

Unnamed.

There seems to be some uncertainty whether this one is a real plan CNSA is working towards, or merely a paper hypothetical. It does appear to be linked to some real orbital scale-model testing, at least, so I'm noting it here as a feasible possibility.

The last scheduled Shenzhou is due to fly in 2022. China could certainly keep making more beyond that, but is at least investigating other options, if not already setting up production of this design or another. Its function appears to be both to ferry crew to Low Earth Orbit, and to get them to more distant space, possibly the Moon. So it's not very surprising that the design looks superficially similar to Apollo, with a conical command module on one of two interchangeable cylindrical service modules.

No exact dimensions are known yet, but presumably it would have a diameter similar to its suggested launchers, either the heavy Chang Zheng 5 (5m diameter) or medium Chang Zheng 7 (3,25m diameter).

Since it is not yet named, there's little for me to discuss yet.

Lynx
(Space plane. Due to begin space service in 2015 2016 unknown)

Lynx

Of everything on this list, this is the one I'll be most surprised to see ever actually getting into space. It has a long history of delays, no huge sponsors, and it doesn't offer much performance - less, in fact, than the purely demonstrational SpaceShipOne, and only one seat more than X-15 offered. There is a bit of a historical trend of proposed spacecraft (both commercial and governmental) faltering completely after similar delays and struggles. The only really interesting thing about Lynx, the fact that it would be a single-stage vehicle, with no carrier plane or launch rocket needed, could either make it more cost-effective (and thus more likely to fly), or too under-powered to achieve much (and thus less likely to fly).

The name has no clear explanation that I can find, except perhaps that it has an X in it. In fact, it began development with the name Xerus, which I believe is a genus of squirrel. I guess that's more X-centric (pun!), but maybe they thought people would be more familiar or comfortable with a name like Lynx? I have no idea what to make of this. Insufficient data.

[EDIT: Lynx is officially indefinitely on hold. My money continues to say that this will never fly, especially since the people who actually wanted it to fly have left the company. I leave it here for reference.]

Dream Chaser
(Space plane. Due to begin space service 1 November 2016 2017?)

Dream Chaser

NASA ruled out several options before selecting CST-100 and Dragon V2 as their new station crew ferries, and the last, most developed proposal to be ruled out was Dream Chaser. Officially, currently, NASA does not intend to use any Dream Chasers, though that is under some dispute. We'll see how that goes, but I'll be a little surprised if NASA's decision is reversed. Regardless of that, ESA has already got its own plans to test a slightly different Dream Chaser variant of their own. At this time, this is the only design on my future probable list with a specific first flight date released to the public.


As a lifting body space plane, Dream Chaser represents the sort of simple DC-3 kind of design that the Space Shuttle Orbiter was originally conceived as. I think it's fair to say that this form of spacecraft is now understood nearly as well as the simple space condom form, so I don't quite buy the argument that copying the Apollo CSM is necessarily the easiest or safest option. The longevity of Soyuz might seem to back that up, but the Shuttle wasn't exactly a flash in the pan either, relatively speaking. It all depends on the particular design, construction and operation of each vessel, much more than on the design heritage it happens to have.

[EDIT: An internal NASA document on the issue suggests that they basically don't sufficiently trust Sierra Nevada's management. And it seems they really, very, super-super trust Boeing's management, which is why CST-100 gets the bigger slice of the commercial crew pie. To my amateur eye, it looks a little like a bureaucracy fetish, but I suppose there has to be more to spaceflight operations than just the vessel.]

[EDIT: The uncrewed cargo variant of Dream Chaser has now been officially hired by NASA as a station supply ferry. This might give the original crewed variant more of a chance to get into space too, but nothing about that step is confirmed yet. The cargo variant (formally called the Dream Chaser Cargo System) differs in that it has folding wings to fit inside of a launch rocket's fairing, it has no windows, and it has a disposable extra cargo module (possibly with solar arrays) hanging off the butt. Launching it inside of a closed fairing does make the aerodynamics of launch simpler, and it gives the vehicle a bit more protection, but on the other hand, the folding wings are another moving part that could go wrong. On average, I'm not sure if it's a worthwhile change, but then I'm not a rocket engineer; it will at least be interesting to see if any cargo variant changes are carried over to the crew variant.]

Dream Chaser would launch on an Atlas V (a descendent of the type that launched the Mercury orbital missions) for NASA, or potentially an Ariane 5 (which gets its name from Minoan mythology) for ESA.

The name Dream Chaser was apparently passed between a series of related proposed designs, and it's literal enough that it's clear what the designers were thinking with it (much clearer than the "Puff the Magic Dragon" link), but it's still interesting and creative enough. It's a literal description of a sentiment, not of the actual vehicle. Individual vehicle names are also planned, but remain unannounced. Rumour says the first atmospheric test Dream Chaser is called Eagle, after the Apollo 11 LM. We'll have to wait and see. [EDIT: One source claims that the first spaceworthy Dream Chaser was initially named, in internal Sierra Nevada discourse, as Ascalon, after the name sometimes given to the weapon used by George the dragon-slayer - which would be a clear jab at their SpaceX competitors. Supposedly this was later cleaned up to the much more neutral Ascension. However, none of these names - Eagle, Ascalon and Ascension - have ever been made officially public, and the evidence for them being used unofficially or internally by the company seems scant so far.]

[EDIT: Second to drop off the future possibles list, Dream Chaser will still fly, but only as an uncrewed cargo ship. The crewed version has been quietly dropped from all official plans.]

Interplanetary Transport System
(Drop ship. Due to begin space service in 2021?)

Interplanetary Transport System spaceship

We've known for years that SpaceX aims to send people to Mars, and they've gradually slipped out small hints about what was originally called their Mars Colonial Transport vessel concept. September 2016 saw them publicise far more in one go, detailing the overall plan for what is now named the Interplanetary Transport System - though to quote Elon Musk, "We're thinking about names. The names thing is really hard."

ITS (or whatever) is a deceptively simple monster. On the pad, it looks like it's only got two stages, a launch vehicle with a spaceship mounted on top. However, even just that simple pair would be the most powerful rocket ever flown, carrying the single most massive spacecraft ever. Add to this that each Mars trip would need to be supported by a series of refuelling flights by equally massive tankers up to the spaceship in Earth orbit first, and it really is a complicated, multi-stage system. They just don't launch all the stages at the same time.

It's all still fairly new and vague. I expect the physical design will change, and the schedule will most certainly slip. The first Mars landing is roughly scheduled for June 2024, but it's not yet clear what the test flights before that will entail, nor at what point they'll change from uncrewed to crewed test flights. (I'm not even clear whether this thing even technically requires a crew.) And from my point of view, one key change will be the adoption of more formal names, not just for the whole system, but for its components. So far, they're just refering to the major bits as the launcher, the spaceship and the tanker. I hope they come up with a good naming scheme.

But we do at least know that their first crewed spaceship to visit Mars is to be named the Heart of Gold, after the Hitchhiker's Guide vessel. This fits well with Musk's habit of drawing names from pop scifi. [I'd also like to suggest the name Botany Bay, if Musk wants to add to his supervillain reputation.]

[EDIT: Not exactly cancelled, but effectively replaced by BFR.]

Being Skeptical of Gender

I have seen among sexists two broad approaches. One is an emotive, shouty, obviously obnoxious sort, which clings to little more than lame cliches and bible quotes for a thin facade of support, but which is generally content to just lurch around unsupported and angry. The other appears more calm and rational, and likes to use "facts" and "studies" (with heavy emphasis on the quotation marks of sarcasm) for support. I am dismissive of these, because that is little better than the way creationists and quacks like to abuse the occasional stray study that they can bend to their purposes.

A series of recent Facebook arguments exchanges of views have reminded me of how often I see the following pattern:
Dude comes somehow into discussion on gender matters, sides in favour of discrimination, claims that research backs him (usually him) up, may or may not provide links, and then acts as if everyone else is anti-science and illogical for not agreeing.

The ones who can't even provide links to the research they claim are pretty easily dismissed as noobish noobs. The ones who provide links are worth looking at, but not by a huge margin. There are two reasons I can think of to be dismissive towards even the study-linking sort of sexist:

1. We don't need no stinking research. As a serious skeptic, that's not a small thing for me to declare, but I got the idea from no lesser skeptic-of-note than Steve Novella, who has made a similar point a few times, usually in relation to race and racism. He has pointed out that we reject racism as an ethical judgement call, not because the science says 'be racist' or 'don't be racist; if we found clear evidence of one race being seriously different from another, would we decide that this justifies being mean to each other? Or is being good to each other regardless of a few fiddling differences better? It may reflect the appreciation for Star Trek that Dr Novella and I have in common, but we both seem to feel that neither pointy ear nor skin colour nor lumpy head should cause us to treat anyone differently. Similarly, I feel the same applies to reproductive organs. I'm sure you can find a study that says that testes make you smarter (or dumber), but I don't really care; I don't want to live in a society where that sort of broad generalisation is the beginning and the end of how individuals are considered. Generalisations have their practical uses, but they should be tools, not straitjackets.

(1.b. On a related but less important note, while the people pushing this kind of research usually like to paint themselves as neutral and "just following the evidence", it is pretty obvious that they're only ever following the evidence in one direction. I have yet to see such a person post a link opposed to what they believe and say, "Oops, looks like my preconceived notions were wrong, I recant". This is not the proper way to use science, it is cherry picking and starting from a conclusion. The same may be true in both directions, but I'm not sure. I was on the fence myself, saw evidence from both sides for a few years, and eventually found feminism more compellingly supported.)

2. I question the research. All of it. I certainly wouldn't say it's all rubbish, but we should be pretty skeptical of it by default. First, when these things are dragged out, they're usually lone studies, not clusters of mutually agreeing research. One paper proves very little. Second, there is reason to be cautious of false positives in even well-regarded research. This does not mean that all of science is junk; this caution is supposed to be there, it's part of the full scientific method. Until something has been checked to pieces, we shouldn't embrace it too tightly. And telling people they have to be second-class citizens because of the research is an exceptionally tight embrace. Even if you disagree with my point 1 (that the research shouldn't matter anyway), you'd better be damn fucking certain that you're not condemning people for a dumb reason like a dodgy study.

(2.b. I have my own little hypothesis about why there's such a glut of gender-related studies for sexists to cherry-pick from. It's because of lazy and/or nervous and/or inexperienced young researchers, grad students and the like. Splitting your sample into boys and girls is, culturally, such an easy, obvious way to get an independent variable for virtually any human study, even if there's no good a priori reason to look there. It's a variable that's seldom going to be reported wrong (by the researcher or the subject), it doesn't take a lot of creative thought to come up with it, supervisors probably don't feel too much pressure to advise against something so simple and doable (even if they don't expect the results will actually be useful; junior research is viewed more as a teaching tool than as "real" research, even if it subsequently gets published), and there's a fair enough chance that you can wring some small pattern out of whatever your dependent variable is (even if that pattern is false, see point 2 above). Then you can have a degree and start thinking about more serious research with more meaningful variables.

I could be wrong about that, but if any young student is looking for a more interesting hypothesis to test, feel free...)

My point is this: Being a good skeptic is not a matter of playing Simon's Research Paper Says. Evidence is good, science is great. But there's more to science than single studies. Scientific consensus is about big patterns revealed by many, many studies over time. This is where we got evolution and climate change and the relativities and a thousand other major theories. But those are factual claims, not subjective judgements about what we need to do to make the world work for us. They are descriptions of the status quo, not policy statements about how and why to either keep or remove the status quo. We can use science to help us make better policy choices, but we also have to think for ourselves.

Picking Sides

About a month ago, I started on a post about the Gaza/Israel mess, but as often happens I didn't get it finished. The central idea behind it has had time to mature, though, and I think it may have broader use. I doubt it's an original idea - in fact, I'm certain it isn't - but it's always nice to come to a realisation on your own.

The idea is this: In destructive conflicts (there can be such a thing as constructive conflict, e.g. the peer review part of the scientific method) between big, vague, general groups, it's most useful to isolate those who perpetuate destructive behaviour. Isolating these people and dealing with them is much more useful than the usual way of framing conflicts, i.e. Side 1 vs. Side A, which usually have little real connection with the root of the conflict. When we pick sides, it's important to start by picking which sides we will accept as even worth picking from. If you let others pick the choice of possible sides for you, then you've already lost all meaningful choice.

The reason for this is that the majority of people on each conventional side are usually not actually inclined towards destructiveness. Perhaps it's my Star Trek-fuelled idealism here, but I think it's a fair bet that most people, most of the time, just want to get on with life and don't really want to tear down those they disagree with. More cynically, you might come to the same end conclusion by saying that sheeple aren't good at taking the initiative, or something like that; it's not really my thing. But the bottom line does hold either way, with plenty to back it up, not least being the fact that this cooperative behaviour is the foundation of all human civilisation, regardless of geography, ideology or time. If we couldn't mostly get along, we'd mostly have to be hermits. Vast cities prove human goodnitude.

So when you do see major violent conflicts breaking out, it's worth remembering that it's almost always a minority conducting the violence. It's traditional to talk about whole nations going to war, but that's not really true. We say "Germany" fought in World War II, but only around a quarter of the German population (an unusually high fraction) were in the military, and not all of those will have fought. Many will have been in support roles, as cooks, engineers, admin clerks, and so on, and not every official combatant actually does fight. We say "the US" fought in the 2003 Iraq War, but only about 0,06% of them actually went there, and again not all will have fought. And the same applies to every nation in every war that I've ever heard of.

Dividing a conflict horizontally into State A and State 1 makes little sense. We should instead divide vertically into the non-problematic majority and the problematic minority. The problematic minority, of course, wouldn't like this, because the cover of being part of a larger community, of supposedly doing what they do for that community, is how they get away with being shitty to others. Nation, state, tribe, clan, people, etc., all offer very convenient concealment for shitty behaviour on a large scale. If I kick you in the shins, I'm a dick. If I kick you in the shins because you hurt my friend, a lot of people might doubt whether I'm the dick - but I still kicked you, I am still being a dick. And if I kick you repeatedly in the shins because you are part of a group that hurt several of my friends... now it starts getting messy and it's hard to separate out cruder, ancient instincts about in-groups and out-groups. But I am, unquestionably, still kicking you in the shins, whatever my motives. And I would suggest that kicking people in the shins is never the sort of behaviour we should routinely accept.

By encouraging people to stop supporting the destructive elements on "their side" (and accepting that these sides are artificial constructs, not natural inevitabilities, and thus changeable), those engaging in destructive behaviour can be better studied and understood, and then corrected without the need for bullets. Hopefully, minimum fuss, maximum happiness for all. I'm not saying any of this is likely to be easy - if it was, I would have no cause to write all this - but it's much easier than a bullet to the gut.

In further support of this, I think it's pretty well established that the opposite is definitely true: It's much easier for the dangerous minority to have their way if they can convince the majority to let them off the leash. We see this with pre-war propaganda, where nationalism is pumped up and the Enemy painted as demons. One example I remember seeing clearly splattered through the media was the US build-up to Iraq in 2003, a period when the US media was especially heavy on the nationalism and anti-Iraq sentiments. It seems to be happening on both sides in Ukraine too, by which I mean two sides are being constructed, by media prodding, out of previously peaceful neighbouring communities. Heaps has been written on war propaganda in many different wars, but the common pattern is that these conflicts don't boil up from below, from what ordinary people want; they're imposed from above, from what an aggressive minority wants. Take that away and you have lots of people who just want to get on with life.

Of course, not all destructive conflicts are of the violent sort. You can destroy without having to hit things. Apartheid worked that way. Sure, the state had violence as a backup, to force compliance with the shitty racist laws if anyone tried anything too bold, but the shitty racist laws were the bulk of the apartheid system, and divisive propaganda helped again to keep people thinking in terms of two big sides. Racism in general doesn't even need formal laws, let alone violent application: Just treating someone like shit and systematically encouraging others to the same is already destructive enough.

And how did apartheid end? Not through the A vs. B, side-against-side conflict that had been fostered for decades, but by the reversal of that, the peaceful acceptance that actually we're all pretty much the same underneath, and the whole division thing was the stupid idea of a stupid, selfish minority. It's fair to say that things haven't been perfectly resolved since then, but the fall into all-out civil war that many predicted or even hoped for, never happened. Those with destructive tendencies were reframed as a side of their own, distinct from the new, big side shared by everyone else.

The post I didn't get around to finishing was going to say something similar about Israel and Gaza, about how a rejection of those who want to keep resorting to violence as a solution (in spite of 60-odd years of clear evidence against this) by both Gazans and Israelis would do more for peace there than any weapon, treaty or religious belief could. It'd be a really tough nut to persuade, but I see no other feasible solution. The majority, I'm quite sure, would get behind that if pressure not to could be stopped for just a while. Instead, they're constantly told that they belong to one faction or the other, and that the opposing faction opposes them and there is no other choice. That's the message that has to be stopped.

In a more mundane (but excitingly modern and cyberspacey!) example, the shittiness I posted about last month, the harassment of online feminism, also seems to fit the same pattern. It's increasingly clear that a few shitty people are actively trying to be destructive, and part of this is the use of propaganda to frame feminism as anti-men. Speaking as a male feminist, that's just silly. The ass-hats want us to think in terms of men vs. women, because big, vague sides like that give them just as much cover for their shitty behaviour as nation-states give to shitty killers in war. Their behaviour is reprehensible, nobody would stand for it if they just came out and did it, so they first get people on their side by smearing the legitimate, reasonable positions of those they dislike, and by building up a big, false them-vs.-us narrative.

Feminism (or anti-sexism), of course, is not anti-man, any more than being anti-apartheid was anti-white, or being against the First World War was anti-Franz Ferdinand or against whatever country you lived in that wanted you to bleed for them in the trenches. These bullshit stories are the cover, the excuse, the illusion needed for shitty behaviour to go undetected.

I know rational, intelligent, educated people who honestly believe in a dangerous feminist conspiracy. They've never quite managed to express what the agenda of this conspiracy is, nor what evidence there is for its existence. I've not encountered any myself, but I know there are also those who fear the ever-murky gay agenda, also the end result of a misbegotten division of humanity in gay and straight sides. Anti-war protesters throughout history have been accused of secretly being enemy agents, not just by blood-thirsty warmongers, but by otherwise normal people who've bought into the them-vs.-us crap. The apartheid government was very happy for people to believe that die Swart Gevaar would get them in their beds. Joe McCarthy felt similarly about the Red Menace. Abigail Williams wanted all of Salem to believe in the immediate threat of witches.

All of these make it harder to identify and deal with real problems, and that's the point. As I said at the top, the sides we should be dividing things into are 'destructive' and 'other'. But, in normal societies that are mostly cooperative and good, natural selection would quickly pick off the destructive individuals who couldn't hide their bad behaviour. The challenge for the rest of us is to spot the ones who've become very good at convincing us that they're on our side.

---

A pre-emptive clarification:

I can foresee my main point above being misunderstood in one crucial way: Rejecting dubiously-allocated sides as a way to end a destructive conflict does not preclude the recognition of these sides in post-conflict reparative efforts. Or more simply, affirmative action isn't racist (for example). If harm was done systematically (which is not necessarily always the case, but is fairly likely in larger, more sustained kinds of conflict), then it's reasonable to think that it can be systematically undone. Harm is bad, which is why we don't like war and bigotry. But the opposite of that, unharm, begoodment, is generally good. Acknowledging past divisions does not turn unharm back into harm, and refusing to acknowledge them can hamper unharm.

---

A small afterthought on dismissive insults:


The destructive minority likes to encourage as many people as possible to disregard anyone suggesting constructive alternatives, and part of that is encouraging disparaging, dismissive labels and insults. They call us peaceniks, doves, cowards, and mean these things pejoratively. They say we're lovers of whatever group they're against, and mean it in a weirdly sexual, angry, pejorative way. Sometimes they flirt with ironic and sarcastic pejoratives, such as the recent 'social justice warrior'. Their ideal trick, however, seems to be to turn whatever we call ourselves into an insult: If 'pacifist' or 'feminist' are widely perceived to be dirty words, then fewer people will want to be one, and the destructive minority wins a little more. The way to undermine such negative labelling, I think, is to proudly wear these insults, embrace them and claim them as your own, while demonstrating the best possible example of what they should stand for.

You Are Other People

My physiology lacks a way to simultaneously laugh with mirth and sigh with despair. But if I could ligh/saugh like that, I'd do it every time I saw someone complain about "those damn ideologies". It reveals a huge lack of self-awareness, if not a total ignorance of what ideology is and what it does.

I can't remember clearly, but I might have posted something vaguely similar once before, about how people complaining that all 'politics' is inherently bad have misunderstood what politics is. But while you could argue that politics does necessarily involve competition over ideas and resources (though that's not necessarily always a bad thing), I think it's hard to argue that there's even a kernel of necessarily-badness about the concept of ideology.

All an ideology is, is a set of beliefs about how the human social world works, and how to respond to this. The trickiest bit in there is probably the word 'belief'; we all believe things, and I do not mean dogmatic blind faith here, I mean the broadest sense of accepting things to be a certain way. This includes the whole spectrum of sane to crazy beliefs, from "I exist" to "I do not exist". It may be true that some specific ideologies are especially crazy and encourage a lot more crazy beliefs, but this is insufficient to say that ideology as a mental tool is entirely and inherently broken. As a science fan, I'd argue that it matters more how you come to your beliefs than specifically what those beliefs are.

The second bit, about what to do about reality, is also tricky, as knowing what to do is hard. Steve Novella made a great point in an episode of SGU a few months ago, along the lines of "there are no true grown-ups". By this I believe he meant, we're all raised with the assumption that someone, somewhere knows what the fuck is going on and has all the answers, but in reality everyone is mostly making things up as they go; older, established ways of doing things are just the ones that have worked often enough in the past, not necessarily the ones we'll need in the future. Everything has to be guessed and improvised to some degree, because none of us has perfect knowledge or perfect understanding. And the bigger and more complex the issue, the less likely it is that any one person can follow it all. Something as vast and messy as a whole human society is horribly tricky to get a mental grip on (though this does make things very interesting). Bottom line, though, is that the difficulty of knowing what to do with reality does not invalidate any and all attempts to do something with reality.

It's hard to see how any person who isn't totally, medically brain-dead could fail to have an ideology of some sort. So I think what people mean, when they say they hate ideologies, is that they hate other people's ideologies; I have yet to see one who hates their own ideology. Many, I reckon, are not even conscious of their own ideological biases. Others are perhaps afraid to commit (publicly or at all) to any positions, and resent or fear those who can. And many, I'm sure, have been upset (rightly or not) by one or two specific ideologies, and have falsely extrapolated their displeasure out to the entire continuum of human ideas. I'm sure there are other explanations, as well as some mixing between them.

So it's a silly thing to say. Don't be that sort of silly.

I had one other thought while writing this: It's easy, especially as you get older, to be amused by people who want to advertise how craaaaaazzzzzzy and weird and different they are. There's some immaturity to it, it's often quite superficial, there's a high probability it will somehow involve fish. But I'd like to hypothesise here that maybe this is an important stage in the maturation process, and that people who skip it are more likely to "hate ideology" and similar effects. I'd presume the mechanism would be something like, if you take the time to focus on your own weirdness (however limited that may be), it gives you an opportunity to learn to accept that you are not always normal, you are not the gold standard against which all others should be judged. It's one possible way to learn that you have your own biases and peculiarities. Failure to explore these should make it less likely that you learn these lessons.

I'd be curious to know if anyone's seen related studies already.