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.
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).