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Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut”
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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No. They weren't "trained to travel in a spacecraft". It was fully automated. They were just passengers on an 11 minute flight.
Seriously, if that makes them astronauts...then everyone who's been on an airplane, is a pilot.
Yuri Gagarin's flight was entirely automated. He went a bit higher and made a full orbit, but I'm pretty sure everyone agrees he's an astronaut.
He was a cosmonaut, so jot that down.
… the best kind of correct…
Sure, but he was the very first person to ever fly in space so that definitely counts for something. Additionally, he could control the spacecraft if there was an emergency.
And he was trained to do so.
"If my Grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike" --Gino D'Acampo
You know that wasn't why she was known as the village bike, right?
The first 'astronauts' were "spam in a can." Yuri Garagin didn't have any controls in his craft, nor did the first few American astronauts. An 'astronaut' is anyone who has gone more than 60 miles up. And yes, if you have been in an airplane you can call yourself a 'flier.'
Wait. Are we seriously saying that Katy Perry and Gayle King are on par with Yuri Gagarin now? This just gets funnier by the minute.
What's the actual difference? Any history book will confirm that Gagarin had as much control of his craft as Katy Perry or Enos the chimp did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
The pilots of the X-15 flew into space and landed their craft.
The difference is, Gagarin was actually capable of piloting the craft.
No, he wasn't, because there were no controls for him to use.
Of course there were. They just weren't sure what the effects of being in space were going to be on his mind and body. They had no idea if he would lose his mind in free-fall, or if he'd suffer a stroke from the g-forces required to reach orbit, or just simply pass out. So the first flight was set to autopilot. It was as much a live human experiment, as it was a test of their equipment. But he definitely had the code to unlock the controls if he needed to.
Bottom line is, he had been a pilot for most of his life, and was fully trained to operate that craft with or without the safety protocols in place. The training that all those early astronauts/cosmonauts went through was insane. The levels of physical and mental competence they expected from them, was more than any standard training given to regular pilots.
It's not like they just grabbed some celebrity off a stage and let them experience free-fall for 11 minutes, so they could plug their upcoming concert tour.
TIL.
None of that changes the fact that the original definition of 'astronaut' was anyone who traveled into space [60 miles up] as a pilot or passenger.
Did they travel in a spacecraft, and did they recieve the necessary training to do so?
Not all astronauts pilot the spacecraft, and most going to eg. the ISS don't actually do anything while going to the station. That trip is also just an automated flight, controlled by the onboard computer.
It's more akin to, "if that makes them astronauts, then people who have traveled on an airplane, has recieved the training to travel in an airplane."