This is an interesting discussion.
I believe that this attitude of avoiding acronyms tells something about people that are whining, sorry. They have something in common: they are new on a project, or never bothered looking up an acronym or have no time or no energy to do so, or are still struggling with the acronym (I have never mastered an acronym of one project I worked in for in years, namely SASS-C, I do understand the issue, but this has never stopped anyone I know from working). I think it is the irritation of not knowing what is being talked about, not being in the loop, that gives acronyms a hard time. If you knew, you would not trip over the acronym.
Good luck with spelling out all those names. And making exceptions for acronyms that originate from outside the company? So you will torture your employees because you can't stay up-to-date with the new acronyms, but they will be allowed to use external acronyms? I think there is a different problem here.
Good luck with looking for names, then. The problem will remain - wtf - oops - is "Crew Dragon"? "Falcon"? "Starlink"? "Starship"? Even SpaceX is meaningless, I would abbreviate it to SX...
And since when would an acronym hurt communication? Acronyms pop up spontaneously because people are lazy and fed up having to spell things out every time, that's how human nature works. The acronyms are necessary to make communication more efficient, to the detriment of those listening in, to the newbies. But they learn fast. So mabe you hate acronyms because you are a slow learner?
Look at the bottom of this page, you will find acronyms - API. Blog. Inc.. Look at the top. There's already one - ".md". Zip. Acronyms are everywhere, it's ridiculous to try to ban them, they will come back.
So I find it very interesting to study people who have issues with acronyms...
Here is the article:
From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that's bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck:
There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.
That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action - I have given enough warning over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past.
For example, there should be not "HTS" [horizontal test stand] or "VTS" [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A "stand" at our test site is obviously a test stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with "Tripod", which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name!
The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, e.g. MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.