[FPSPACE] Mike Melvill astronaut?

[Rui C. Barbosa]

Hi!

The day will arrive when we can say that it makes no sense in counting the
number of cosmonauts and astronauts, and I think I will stop when we arrive
to the 500th or 1000th person to fly in space. So until then...

>
> In my opinion, these should not be mixed and no uniform list of cosmonauts
> should exist. One should be for orbital spacecraft, another one for
suborbital
> rocket planes. In this second list, we can establish an arbitrary
treshold, and
> if X-15 used 50 statute miles, let's go with it and count SS1 as the 14th
manned
> suborbital flight.
>

This is a good idea, but why do we should use the 50 statute mile definition
(a US Air Force definition)? Why don't we use the Federatin Aeronautique
International definition of 100 km? This is a international organization so
I think we should use this one.

>
> Well, I *do* count Shepard and Grissom in the 'orbital' roster as their
spacecraft
> were designed for orbit and just tested in ballistic laps.
>

This doesn't sound good. Does this means that we also count the April 5
anomaly, aka Soyuz18-1, as a orbital spaceflight? (Lazarev and Makarob were
toghether the 9th soviet cosmonauts and the 27th humans to do two
spaceflights, I think!).

Best regards!

Rui C. Barbosa
www.zenite.nu/orbita
Braga - Portugal