I think it’s not unimportant. In the past, Astronauts have been highly skilled people that trained their whole life for one goal, to get into space. It’s a job and a calling.
Are these new people that go into space that? I would just call them space tourists, not astronauts. If they do not perform task during the flight, they’re passengers, not crew.It is great that the accessibility of space is getting better, but calling everyone that goes into space an astronaut would be, in my opinion, diminishing the achievement of the people that came before them and pushed this frontier.
These are not the explorers, these are the colonialists.
Yeah it’s like calling people travelling by plane pilots. They’re just passengers.
It says quite a lot that this “discussion” completely ignored every space tourist after the first, right up to the point that a group of women made the trip.
completely ignored
Obviously that’s an exaggeration.
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57950149
- https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4227/1
- https://indianalawreview.com/2023/09/25/one-giant-leap-space-tourists-as-astronauts-an-analysis-of-the-outer-space-treaty-and-rescue-agreement-using-the-vienna-conventions-treaty-interpretation-method/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/oo1jli/can_we_call_them_astrotourists_instead_of/
It says quite a lot
Does it? What if a thorough media analysis were to show that the level of discussion of this topic is roughly in proportion to the level of coverage of each mission?
Or that it is related to the extent to which these people are getting described as astronauts? For example, Shatner got a decent amount of coverage, but my guess is that fewer than half of the articles about his trip actually described him as an astronaut. E.g. NPR
You don’t think Bezos only did this for the “Female Empowerment” publicity checkbox? You’ll give him the benefit of doubt?
Of course he did. Everything billionaires do is for their own benefit first.
What do you call someone who hasn’t been to space?
An astro-not.
Also, are they crew or passengers?
Cargo.
Reminds me of a certain astronaut who got nicknamed “ballast”. I believe he eventually became NASA administrator… :)
