ORLANDO, Fla. — The good news is people launching on space tourism flights in the future get to go into space. The bad news is that they will no longer be awarded commercial astronaut wings by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA announced it was ending its Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program that gave the commemorative title to humans that had ventured past what it considers having made it into space, 50 miles altitude, aboard FAA-approved spacecraft.
“The U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry has come a long way from conducting test flights to launching paying customers into space,” FAA Associate Administrator Wayne Monteith said in a news release. “The Astronaut Wings program, created in 2004, served its original purpose to bring additional attention to this exciting endeavor. Now it’s time to offer recognition to a larger group of adventurers daring to go to space.”
The FAA said that those who had already ventured into space including billionaires Jeff Bezos on his Blue Origin New Shepard and Richard Branson on a Virgin Galactic flight, will receive the honors.
So will actor William Shatner and the other Blue Origin participants from the July and October flights from West Texas. The planned launch of the third Blue Origin flight with former NFL star and “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan, as well as Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, and four others, will also get their wings, as long as the launch occurs before the end of the year.
Beyond Dec. 31, though, the FAA said it will continue to recognize those who have made it into space on its website.
The program was created to recognize pilots and flight crew that were in the early stages of commercial space travel development. Those early efforts grew to support private industry’s existing spacecraft today.
The program ends having recognized 24 individuals, including some who have flown more than once past the 50-mile threshold, which is also the altitude the U.S. Air Force considered for awarding astronaut wings to its early test pilots.
The FAA program includes all four members of the Inspiration4 civilian mission that flew into orbit aboard the SpaceX Dragon this past September. It also includes Wally Funk, the oldest woman to venture into space, and Oliver Daemen, the youngest person to ever venture into space. They both accompanied Bezos, along with his brother Mark Bezos, on the first New Shepard flight.
It also includes an honorary award to Michael Alsbury and Peter Siebold, who flew on the SpaceShipTwo Enterprise, which broke up and crashed in 2014 killing Alsbury and seriously injuring Siebold.
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