Astronauts

17-07-23 00 / episode: 182

Script

"Astronauts.

Do you think much about astronauts these days? I'll bet you don't when I was growing up, they were kind of big because they were going to the moon and stuff like that.

And astronauts.

Well, number one astronauts are always bigger in a kid's mind.

And also they were great people.

I mean, great humans.

They had unbelievable skills and massive training.

They had been educated and they did things that most of us couldn't do or wouldn't do.

So, astronauts were pretty up there for me anyway.

Anyway, um these days astronauts are changing.

Not that much, I don't think, but somewhat what I mean is now we're getting more astronauts.

Now we have commercial space ventures.

We have companies that are sending rockets into space and we have companies sending rockets into space with space tourists.

Can you believe it? So now does that space tourist count as an astronaut? I don't think so personally, but you might want to disagree with me after all, they are getting some special training and they are going into space.

I mean, astronaut, the word astro stars and not sailor, a sailor of the stars.

If you're out amongst the stars sailing around, you're an astronaut.

But let's say the meaning of the word has changed.

The original astronauts were kind of a different caliber of people.

Now, some of the astronauts are just plain old scientists who've been trained a little bit extra.

They don't actually fly the space uh spaceship.

They're on the spaceship, running tests and things like that.

Of course, they still have a lot of training, but it isn't quite as extensive as it used to be.

I don't think that's just me talking though.

I might be wrong there but I don't think most of those astronauts have that depth of training and certainly not the, um, the tourists in space.

Would you like to be an astronaut?"