If NASA didn’t train you, are you an astronaut or a space tourist?
Astronauts. Private astronauts. Civilian crew.
A new group of people is buying — or winning — its way into microgravity. And with its emergence comes a big question: What do we call these individuals?
Those in the space community have a broad range of reactions, ranging from “Does it matter?” to “Do they deserve the prestigious title of astronaut?”
There’s also an understanding that the public could dictate the answer.
“These terms don’t exactly roll off the tongue,” said Andrew McKenzie, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas. “A kid’s not going to want to grow up dreaming to be a civilian crew. Space tourist is not a good Halloween costume.”
Such questions are pertinent this summer because there has been a surge in human spaceflight. Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have flown on their own suborbital vehicles. And this week, four people are headed into orbit on a privately funded SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
This Inspiration4 mission, with a five-hour launch window beginning Wednesday at 7:02 p.m. CDT, will be the first time a spacecraft circles the Earth without a professional astronaut or cosmonaut onboard.
“They may not be regular people, but they’re certainly additional people who are not employed by the government as full-time astronauts,” said George Nield, who was the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation from 2008 to 2018. “And they’re getting to go into space. That is a huge step toward what many people have talked about for years, which is
opening up space to more and more people.”
The Inspiration4 flight is being paid for by 38-year-old Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, an integrated payment processing and technology solutions company. According to Forbes, Isaacman had a net worth of $2.4 billion as of Friday.
The price paid for this flight has not been disclosed, but a 2019 report from the NASA Office of Inspector General suggests that NASA is paying $55 million per seat on trips to the International Space Station.
Rather than going to the International Space Station, the Inspiration4 crew will embark on a multiday journey orbiting the Earth and conducting research experiments on human health and performance. Their flight will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“The crew recognizes they are standing on the shoulders of all who came before them to explore space,” an Inspiration4 spokesperson said in an email. “This mission is a steppingstone on the journey toward the commercialization of space exploration and making everyday spaceflight a reality.”
Isaacman, the mission’s commander, is using Inspiration4 to raise awareness and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude and a pediatric cancer survivor, was chosen as the flight’s medical officer.
Chris Sembroski, who works as an aerospace industry employee at Lockheed Martin and will serve as a mission specialist on the flight, gained his seat through a sweepstakes that raised money for St. Jude.
Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and science communication specialist who was previously a NASA astronaut finalist, won her seat through a contest promoting Shift4 Payments’ e-commerce platform called Shift4Shop. Proctor is the mission’s pilot, though the vehicle is fully autonomous.
Their flight is being called the first all-civilian mission to orbit. In this context, civilian suggests the crew members aren’t government employees or professional astronauts.
But “civil space” has long been used to describe NASA’s domain — differentiating it from national security space that includes activities by the military — and “civilian” has described its astronauts not on active military duty.
“At the time of Apollo 11 the U.S. press made a big deal of the fact that the first lunar mission was commanded by a civilian (Neil Armstrong, who left the Navy prior to Apollo 11), so the term ‘civilian astronaut’ has an important history in the politics of astronautics,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Center for Astrophysics, a Harvard and Smithsonian collaboration, said on his website planet4589.org.
According to McDowell, who uses the dictionary definition of civilian as not on active duty in the armed services, there have been 15 all-civilian orbital flights. The first was Soyuz TMA-3 in 2003 with a Russian cosmonaut, NASA astronaut and European Space Agency astronaut launching on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
“Non-military government employees are also civilians,” he said, “and attempting to change the language to say that they aren’t is pernicious and stupid.”
Special status
Robert Pearlman, founder and editor of space history news site collectspace.com, suggested calling the Inspiration4 crew an all-amateur crew. Amateur is defined by Merriam-Webster as “one who engages in a pursuit, study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than a profession,” though Pearlman acknowledged that it tends to have a more negative connotation.
“Right now, there is a desire to call yourself an astronaut because of the history and legacy that holds,” Pearlman said. “There’s going to come a time, maybe relatively soon, that everyone will know someone who went to space. And at that point it will no longer be seen as special, so they won’t want to be called astronauts.”
The term astronaut was derived from Greek words meaning star and sailor. NASA adopted this term through common use and preference by its early team members, according to the book “Suddenly Tomorrow Came … A History of the Johnson Space Center.”
Today, it gives the NASA astronaut designation to individuals after they’re selected as astronaut candidates and have completed their training. This training takes about two years.
Both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic said its customers will be called astronauts, though Virgin Galactic said it generally refers to the market as the private astronaut market. These companies are offering suborbital flights, which is a quick jaunt into space that does not circle the globe. Houston-based Axiom Space, which is planning its first mission to the International Space Station next year, calls its customers sovereign/national astronauts (this includes professional astronauts from other countries) and private astronauts.
The Axiom crew will ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, but the mission is being planned and managed by Axiom.
“The use of the term ‘astronaut’ is intentional because Axiom crews train in a rigorous, multimonth curriculum at space agency and transportation partner facilities, fly with experienced astronauts in command, live and work aboard a destination in orbit in the form of the ISS, and bring comprehensive research and educational outreach portfolios,” Axiom spokesman Beau Holder said in an email.
The Inspiration4 crew has likewise completed extensive training on topics including the rocket and spacecraft, emergency preparedness, operating in microgravity and getting in and out of their spacesuits.
Prestige in the title
But people flying into space with one of these newer companies have largely purchased their ticket or won it through a sweepstakes — they weren’t selected through an ultracompetitive process as NASA astronauts are. Since the 1960s, the agency has selected only 350 people to train as astronaut candidates.
“The term astronaut does have a special meaning to society,” said James R. Hansen, the author of “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong” and professor emeritus of history at Auburn University. “It sort of dilutes the significance and the meaning of the term.”
When Dennis Tito purchased his ride into space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2001, NASA referred to him — and subsequent travelers who booked flights through the space tourism company Space Adventures — as a spaceflight participant.
“I can imagine there being some slight shade associated with that decision to call him a spaceflight participant,” said Jason Davis, editorial director at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that seeks to get more people engaged with space.
This was before the agency more fully embraced opening low-Earth orbit to more people and commercial companies.
Today, NASA uses the term “private astronaut” for space station crew members who aren’t NASA or international partner astronauts/cosmonauts and directly support the agency’s efforts to create a robust low-Earth orbit economy.
However, it still uses “spaceflight participant” to describe space station crew members who fly with the Russian space agency Roscosmos and are not a cosmonaut, NASA astronaut or space station international partner astronaut.
Language evolves, and this question will likely sort itself out. Companies might trademark their own words, or the public might opt for terms that support their feelings around this new era of human spaceflight. Perhaps “privonauts” for private astronauts or “egonauts” if they’re less supportive of wealthy individuals buying seats into space, said McKenzie, the associate professor of linguistics.
Until then, the space community will continue engaging in one of its favorite pastimes.
“A lot of this is just arguing semantics,” Davis said, “and if there is one thing the space community loves to do consistently, it’s argue about semantics.”