Talk:Astronaut

Taikonaut
Taikonaut is the term I have seen in every article by western media, and the term apparently used by many people in China. Despite it not being the official term, I'd say it is definately in major use. — Swpb talk contribs 14:46, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * While that may be and we should certainly add some citations to that effect, it is coined term by the media and not the Chinese word for an astronaut. Consider that nine citizens of France have flown in space, while only three from China. Should we not list the coined term "spationaut" in the opening paragraph? As this is an article in the English Wikipedia about professional space travelers, I suggest we stick to "astronaut" in the opening section and detail all international versions of the word in the Terminology section. Rillian 18:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Would you propose removing cosmonaut from the introduction too? Why should use by governments be the criterion for including an alternate name in the introduction, rather than popular use of the term? It seems to me popular usage would be a more important factor, perhaps even the most important. What places taikonaut in the category with astronaut and cosmonaut, as opposed to spationaut and all the various other alternate-language versions people regularly add to the introduction, is that China, like Russia and the U.S., has its own manned space program. The three Chinese space travellers were launched from China, aboard Chinese spacecraft (Admittedly glorified Soyuz redesigns, but still) - I think this is a pretty concrete distinction, and between the official, government-sanctioned term and the term in popular usage, I would favor the latter. — Swpb talk contribs 05:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't propose that governments should be arbitrator, I said that the Chinese word for astronaut is not taikonaut. The word is hángtiān yuán (in Pinyin), not taikonaut, and when the Chinese translate hángtiān yuán into English, they translate it as astronaut, not taikonaut. Unless we can find some citations that show the term has become as commonly used and as commonly known as the Russian version космона́вт, it doesn't merit mention in the opening paragraph. Rillian 13:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I seem to remember reading that in China, the term in common use was "taikong ren" which was translated to taikonaut, but I can't find anything to back that up. So I suppose that if the common Chinese term had a unique English translation, it would merit placement in the introduction - but I don't know anyone in China and the google will only tell me what terms the media use. — Swpb talk contribs 17:17, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought the term has been accepted and used by Western media years ago. See for example.  Even Bob Casta introduced the pretend astronauts as Taikonauts during the NBC broadcasting of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. I really don't understand why some Wikipedia police tries to censor this term? What is the big deal? Kowloonese (talk) 19:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I sensed that there was a misunderstand in the thread of discussion above. Taikong Ren is a transliteration of a Chinese term.  Taikonaut is an English term used by Chinese and Western media in English publications to refer to the spacemen sent to space using Chinese rockets. Some one probably the dinosaur type seems to forget language is living and evolving.  When a term become popular and common, it should be acknowledged as part of the language. e.g. Bling Bling is added recently to some dictionary. So are you trying to tell me Bling Bling wasn't a English word before some arbitary publisher decided to include or exclude the word?  The English language belongs to the public, not some publishers. Kowloonese (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph on taikonauts sucked. I tried to fix it, but it's still lacking, and no sources either. Please someone fix it. -Jaardon 23:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Will this do? It mentions the term repeatedly, links it to the usage of astronaut and as far as I can see it seems to be coming from a reliable source. I'll put it in for now and if anyone objects it can be removed at their discretion. --Candlewicke (Talk) 19:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * "The word is a hybrid of the Chinese term "taikong" (space) and the Greek "naut" (traveler), or astronaut, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary." --Candlewicke (Talk) 20:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

"taikongren" and "astronaut" is use more often in south east asia. "taiko" sound more like "big brother. Don't even know there is "Taikonaut" until I read this page.Mclelun (talk) 04:12, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I also noticed that some users that edit this page seem to be for some reason against using "taikonaut" even though I found sources too. If it is in Concise Oxford English Dictionary doesn't that mean thats source enough to use it into the intro? I got flamed for suggesting that a few months ago too. I don't know why only astronaut or cosmonaut seem acceptable to the main editors of this article? Oddness. Cheers, Nesnad (talk) 05:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Man...seriously? "Taikonaut" isn't even a fucking word in English. If you're gonna make a proposal or try to make point, at least propose with the actual terms, 太空人 or 航天员. Don't make up some transliteration that's not even in the dictionaries. - M0rphzone (talk) 09:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I did a minor overhaul to consolidate all of the etymology into a single paragraph in the overview, however I also specified how "cosmonaut" is largely a political term and that "taikonaut" is used somehwat informally; let me know if this violates any decisions made on this talk page Orchastrattor (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Orchastrattor! I think your changes made a big improvement.


 * The one thing I think was missing was that the section about the word "cosmonaut" had the heading "Russian". I changed that to "Cosmonaut", and likewise with "Astronaut" and "Taikonaut". TypoBoy (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 September 2020
In the terminology, 'other terms section' (section 2.4), please add a newly-coined word for Arab astronauts, as follows: To refer to an Arab astronaut the term "najmonaut" is used and it derives from the Arabic word for star "najm" and the Greek word for sailor "nautes".

References: http://najmonauts.com https://www.reddit.com/user/science_vid/comments/j18pd0/is_there_are_name_for_astronaut_in_the_arab_world/ Dan287 (talk) 11:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not done, we only report words that are in common use. – Thjarkur (talk) 11:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

"Cosmonaut" on par with "astronaut" by way of reality & topic of this article; not a subset.
hi. I've never consider user-created WP "rules", which more often than not are pieces of advice rather than "laws", as more important than the principle and rationale they are meant to support. When other editors are sending me to some obscure WP theory page, I usually ignore it, but when I do take the time and try to decipher the twisted lingo usually used there, I get enough margin for supporting my version as much as that of my supposed "opponent". So back to basics.

Why do we have boldface in the lead? Because we want to be user-friendly. It's simply to indicate which terms are being discussed and explained in the article, at its very beginning. A very substantial part of the space travellers dealt with in this article are cosmonauts, rather than astronauts; qed, discussion closed. It was actually quite a decision to call the article Astronaut rather than Cosmonaut, but a) I do understand that the former is by far more widely used in English, and b) the redirect solves much of that problem - although I completely disagree with the redirect leading to a subset and not to the top of the article. Check out the much more balanced German WP article, where they show how for instance there are several examples of people who are, strictly speaking, both cosmonauts and astronauts, two of which flew first in a Soviet/Russian-made vehicle and then in a NASA vehicle. And there are lots of Western and other non-Russian cosmonauts, especially since the Space Shuttle programme has shut down.

Don't get me wrong: I have never been "pro-Soviet" or anything alike, quite the opposite; I'm just trying to make WP as objective, informative, and user-friendly as I possibly can. And the relegation of "cosmonaut" to the "Russia" subset is none of that: it's objectively wrong (West-centered and counter-factual), non-informative (keeps user from understanding the reality), and user-unfriendly (those coming to the page looking up "cosmonaut" are sent to the wrong place and need to find their way to the correct information, which many don't have the time, disposition, or skill to do).

The first requirement of an encyclopedic article is to work with a clear definition and stick to it. The German WP is a good example on how it's done correctly: the topic here is "space traveller", which is mainly covered in reality by two important and widely-used terms, "cosmonaut" and "astronaut", with some other terms being introduced by specific nations (China, India, France, Malaysia). The German WP probably gives a bit too much space to the more fringe terms, although a) China might prove to be more than fringe, and b) that's what an encyclopedia does, the enkyklios part is meant as "complete", but "cosmonaut" and "astronaut" are definitely both mainstream and deeply rooted.

Sometimes I'm a bit in doubt when sustaining a proposition, but this time I really am not. I hope you can see the validity of the point I'm making. Have a great day, Arminden (talk) 11:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: I see this topic has been discussed over and over again. A neutral position has always been the most reasonable one, in general and in this case in particular. The insistence of some to create hierarchies where there are none, in a time when space travel is so internationalised (especially since the Space Shuttles have stopped flying to the International Space Station), and private space travel is on the rise and new concepts & terms are emerging, strikes me as silly. Arminden (talk) 11:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

History and general overhaul
Having a level 4 article classified as C class is honestly nothing short of an embarrassment, and I think the biggest problem is that this article just doesn't go into the history of manned spaceflight at all, its all just definitions and technicalities. There is a section on "milestones" but its formatted like a list and just makes the whole article read even more broken up and confusing. I probably won't have the time to write up a whole new section by myself but a good place to start would be pooling together a bunch of potential sources here so that we can use them later. Orchastrattor (talk) 21:06, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 September 2021
Please change "ESA envisions to recruit an astronaut with a physical disability" to "ESA envisions recruiting an astronaut with a physical disability". Bad grammar. 2001:BB6:4713:4858:7DCC:1F54:AB7A:19CD (talk) 12:49, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Space travel(l)er
I changed the redirect for Space traveller form here to List of space travellers by first flight (I also changed/created redirects for one l and plural s variants pointing to the same place; Space traveler ‎ was previously pointing to human spaceflight and the plural ones did not exist). See also Talk:List_of_space_travellers_by_first_flight. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

First ESA parastronaut selected
On November 23, 2022, it was announced that John McFall (athlete) was chosen to be the first ESA parastronaut. The article should be updated to reflect this. 212.186.238.122 (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Chinese for 'spaceman'
This is probably a generally accepted translation for 太空人 (tàikōng rén), and probably how they translate it into English in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. That said, there is generally no gender attached to the Chinese character 人 (rén), meaning person, people etc. Nevertheless, without context attached to it, when reading, it is sometimes assigned a male gender by the reader. Also tàikōng rén would be the mainland Mandarin (national Chinese) pinyin romanization for 太空人. The romanization for Canatonese, as mainly spoken in Hong Kong, would be different (possibly: Taai hang yan?), and Taiwan use the Wade-Giles romanization (possibly: t'ai k'ung jen?). I am probably being a bit pedantic here, but thought to add a comment nonetheless. DeptfordDave JC (talk) 17:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Space tourists
This statement needs updating: "a generally-accepted but unofficial term for a paying non-crew passenger who flies a private non-NASA or military vehicles above 50 miles (80 km) is a space tourist (as of 2020[needs update], nobody has yet qualified for this status)." People obviously do qualify at this point, including William Shatner. The wording is also mangled in multiple ways and should read "a generally-accepted but unofficial term for a paying non-crew passenger who flies in a private (non-NASA, non-military) vehicle above 50 miles (80 km) is a space tourist ...", probably followed by a mention of the first qualifying instance. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:34, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Small mistake many people make…
Astronauts and Cosmonauts are different. Astronauts land on space bodies like the moon and artificial ones too, like the ISS (International Space Station) Cosmonauts just go into space, and don’t land on anything. DogeofWisdom69 (talk) 09:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll take it... How would you compare the achievements of, say, Scott Carpenter (an astronaut) and Yuri Malenchenko (a cosmonaut)? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)