Secretary of Transportation weighs in
That was pretty much how things stood until Thursday evening, when the Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, shared some thoughts on the social media site X.
“The last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have ‘demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety,'” Duffy wrote. “The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.”
So
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