** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Raymond Lin said:
The whole thing was automated wasn't it? It would be like sitting at a 2 seater F1 car and call yourself a F1 driver.
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But they aren't calling themselves spaceship pilots are they?

People seem to be confusing the terms pilot and astronaut as if they are the same thing.
 
amigafan2003 said:
But they aren't calling themselves spaceship pilots are they?

People seem to be confusing the terms pilot and astronaut as if they are the same thing.
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And today they are passengers. It's a bit like me getting on a plane/car/bus/boat as passengers.

They were passengers today.
 
Feek said:
I feel that to call these people astronauts is an insult to the word astronaut. They are passengers, nothing more.

The technology is fantastic, that rocket landing back was incredible to watch and hopefully it will progress further but they're really not astronauts.
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Eeeeennhh..

If we take that attitude, then Al Shepard and Gus Grissom weren't astronauts until their respective second flights since their first Mercury missions were suborbital lobs just like this one. And Yuri Gagarin had no control over his flight either - the Soviets at the time viewed pilot control of the spacecraft as a bug rather than a feature after all.
 
Raymond Lin said:
And today they are passengers. It's a bit like me getting on a plane/car/bus/boat as passengers.

They were passengers today.
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And astronauts.

The definition will probably have to change when consumer spaceflight becomes normal, but they are still astronauts as the definition stands today.
 
amigafan2003 said:
And astronauts.

The definition will probably have to change when consumer spaceflight becomes normal, but they are still astronauts as the definition stands today.
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You can, not stopping you or anyone else calling them that. I am calling them passengers, like you can't stop me calling them that.
 
JRS said:
*Spock eyebrow*

:p

Still wouldn't mind knowing what the hell manual flight control has to do with anything, unless we're now saying that Gagarin wasn't an astronaut either...
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I meant when people throws names as insult…(I was also aware of that when I wrote that too).
 
VaderDSL said:
Yes, he was involved directly with the training/operations of the mission and he orbited, and he trained to control the spacecraft manually if necessary :)
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So did a bunch of people who never made it to space!
 
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VaderDSL said:
Yes, he was involved directly with the training/operations of the mission and he orbited, and he trained to control the spacecraft manually if necessary :)
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So in 2023 when they send the crew (and untrained to fly) up to the ISS on the fully automated Crew Dragon, the "passengers" wont be astronauts?

Why does the ability to fly the space craft have to be a qualifier to be an astronaut? 80% of the people who went up in the space shuttle couldn't fly it.
 
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