This Is my Sad I've-Been-to-Space Face

The Federal Aviation Administration has decided to get out of the business of deciding which people are astronauts. The number of people launched into near-space by various billionaires is rising too fast and since none of them do anything but sit there -- except for the three minutes or so they float around in zero G -- they don't really fit our classical picture of an astronaut who actually does something while in space. They are what test pilots in the 1960s called the Mercury astronauts: "Spam in a can."

On the one hand, it's kind of neat that we now have so many people going on these space-border rides that we have to narrow our definition of being an astronaut. And we can all marvel that a government agency quits doing something, while whatever part of us that is libertarian can be minutely cheered that a function which the government doesn't really have any business doing will no longer be done by the government. It will be a very small and quiet cheer, of course.

Should I ever be lucky enough to get a ride on one of these existing or in-the-works projects, it will be after January 1 and because that is after the Federal Aviation Administration stops designating people as commercial astronauts, I will not get wings.

But since I would have been able to get up to the very border of space (or even beyond it, depending on what future flights in this area may hold), I most certainly will not care one dadgum bit even if I have to draw my wings on a piece of paper and safety-pin them to my lapel. Because I will have been to space.