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A few years back, I was driven — in an ordinary car — around the racetrack used for the Indianapolis 500. We only went about 35mph, but it was cool.
However, my casual ride around the Brickyard doesn’t make me a professional IndyCar driver.
Lately, parroting the commercial spaceflight companies’ press releases, media have started referring to people who ride those spaceflights as astronauts.
Astronauts are highly trained and skilled professionals. This is true of actual commercial astronauts as well as NASA astronauts.
And yes, we also have scientist astronauts who aren’t primarily pilots. But they, too, are highly trained professionals — not recipients of honorary titles.
What It Takes
Back in the 1980s, Barbara Morgan — a schoolteacher — was selected by NASA to fly aboard the space shuttle. She was the runner up in a contest. The winner was Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe would fly first.
Challenger exploded and Morgan’s flight was canceled. She had received extensive training to be a passenger on the Shuttle. She was not an astronaut.
As an elementary school teacher, she had neither the skills nor experience to be even a credible astronaut candidate.
