Talk:List of space travelers by name

Gender?
I find it odd that there is a special symbol for female space travelers. Why is the gender relevant? Why mark the female space travelers, and not the male? Why is the Venus symbol pink? How should a hypothetical, future, transgender space traveler be symbolized? I kindly suggest to remove this symbol. Oz1sej (talk) 14:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I partly agree with this comment. Although, I feel it could be relevant in certain situations. But if women are marked, so should the men. I believe the mars symbol should be used as well. Both symbols should be black. 209.89.243.169 (talk) 08:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)


 * A sortable table would be fine here, but I don't know if gender symbols are sortable. --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 11:28, 14 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm removing them, no other list of people has these JeffUK (talk) 17:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This discussion is 8 years old. Suggest you get consensus on this first. Rctgamer3 (talk) 17:39, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Nope, editing boldly! Worth also noting that [] exists for people who are interested, so removing these symbols does not remove information from wikipedia as a whole. This seems to be the ONLY 'list of people' article I can find with these gender identifiers; even sportsperson lists where gender is much more relevant don't include these. They're distracting, and the 'girly pink' venus symbol is borderline offensive JeffUK (talk) 17:49, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Missed Serena Auñón-Chancellor. By the way, I agree the gender identification was rather head-scratching. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 23:30, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Potential for not publicly known?
Especially with the space race of the Cold War, both sides but the Russians especially with their culture of secrecy would have almost certainly launched people into space for military purposes or for other reasons that they didn't want known. Could we mention that there was potential for that at the time? Cs302b (talk) 00:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Given how publicly visible space launches are, how much PR benefit there is in publicizing human spaceflight, and how easy it is for the U.S. to determine the size and orbit of objects launched (and thus whether or not it's possible that any humans are aboard), and that human-aboard vessels have to return to earth without burning up (and it would be obvious when this happens), this seems very unlikely. If there are reliable sources that say otherwise, that would be a different story, but I wouldn't mention it out of sheer speculation. -- Beland (talk) 06:39, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Left the Earth's orbit?

 * "24 people have completely left the Earth's orbit"

I have a problem with this sentence. Isn't the Moon in Earth's orbit and aren’t you still in Earth's orbit on the way to the Moon? Also, don't Astronauts leave orbit when they land back on Earth?

I think it should be changed to: "24 people have traveled out of low Earth orbit" --Philip Stevens 09:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I quite agree Adambisset 08:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

1000 human earth-escapes mile-mark?
I read someplace that the number of times that a human has left the earth reached 1000 within the last 6 months or so, but I have not been able to find the article again. I spent some time Googling, but was unable to find anything related to it; has anyone heard about this? Leon7 19:18, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Today, 450 humans have been higher than 100 km, and 456 have been higher than 50 miles. If you count space travelers for every space flight they have done, you might end up with 1,000. Go ahead counting ;-) --Necessary Evil 23:45, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Flags
Hi! I noticed that on this page there is no clear definition, what the flags next to the persons' names mean. The nationality, of course. And a former one (Merbold, but not Bella)? Or only the flag for the country of birth (Wang, but not Trinh)? I think we should have a consistent presentation of the flags, and therefore a clear definition is required. I opened a discussion on Talk:List of astronauts by name and hope we can get a consensus. In most cases, the flags are clear, but there are some exceptions, when people change countries, or when whole countries change. Meet you over there. --Asdert 19:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

On Talk:List of astronauts by name it was agreed that the flags should indicate the person's citizenship (not nationality) at the time of the flight(s). So some cosmonauts that flew as Soviet and as Russian citizens will get two flags. --Asdert 22:58, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggest a Λ to indicate a suborbital flight. Or something with a little more curved top. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maschwab (talk • contribs) 18:08, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Surname of Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor?
Someone has placed the Malaysian in the M section. I'm not familiar with Malaysian names, but to have Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor in both the S and M sections is unacceptable. Does anyone know the correct answer? Necessary Evil 19:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * According to this, he has no surname, as the MOS classifies it. They are referring to him as "Sheikh Muszaphar", so I would think it should be listed under "S". Ariel  ♥  Gold  20:13, 13 October 2

Nationality of space travelers
If we take into account cosmonauts’ place of birth or ethnic descent, a lot of details will encumber the list and entangle a question. It is rather difficult and even delicate to determine genuine nationality of a person (I don’t mean citizenship). For example, Sharipov was born in Kyrgyzstan, his nation is Uzbek, but he is citizen of Russian Federation. Manarov was born in Azerbaijan, but he belongs to small ethnic group of the Laks (territory of Daghestan, RF). Yurchikhin was born in Autonomous Republic of Adzharia in Georgia, but has Greek descent (Greece even consider him as informal first Greek cosmonaut). So, which flag we should place in the list of space travelers? Russian, Adzharian, Georgian or Greek? Eighteen Soviet/Russian cosmonauts were born in Ukraine, so what? Why Artsebarsky is marked with Ukrainian flag and other 17 – are not?

By the way, there is written here, that Anders is the first Asian-born astronaut. I am sorry, but Altai Krai where Gherman Titov was born is situated in Asia!

Another question is Kazakh cosmonauts. The government of Kazakhstan officially regards them as their cosmonauts № 1 and № 2 exclusively because of their ethnic origin forgetting that Shatalov, Patsayev, Viktorenko, Lonchakov were the natives of Kazakhstan too. Furthermore, Aubakirov and Musabayev were Soviet (later Russian) Air Force officers and could not be foreigners by definition. Aubakirov carried out his spaceflight two months before December, 1991, when Kazakhstan got independence. As for Musabayev, he has got Kazakhstan sitizenship only this year (2007), when was retired from Russian Forces. It is obviously that Aubakirov and Musabayev should be considered as Soviet and Russian cosmonauts (or even primarily).

I believe that the nation of any astronaut in space statistics is determined by his sitizenship at the moment of the spaceflight but not his birthplace, former or current residence and ethnic origin. In my opinion, the country that sent cosmonaut to space is more essential criterion than present-day address which can change scores of time. Eugene SPB 22:33, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixes
Somehow the numbers were in error -- as the running numeration now clearly shows, the list contains 477 individuals, 3 of whom (Walker, Melvill, Binnie) did not reach orbit. If the enumeration is maintained, it should be easier to double-check the numbers in future. RandomCritic (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This list is a couple of spaceflights out of date again. RandomCritic (talk) 13:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * And with the latest Shuttle launch, it looks like the list is missing some 9 people. RandomCritic (talk) 00:39, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Krikalev is no longer record holder, although Padalka has not yet returned from orbit. Does this matter, or should the duration record-holder be updated? Padalka will de-orbit in a few weeks from date of this note. Deldotvee (talk) 06:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Commercial space flight
What do we do with this list when we are flying people up 10, 20, or 50 a week through commercial spaceflight? (you can quote me on this for laughs in 2030, but Virgin flights, I want a free ride out of it) 02:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)Cs302b (talk)
 * That'll be a good problem to have! For now just over 500 humans have been in space in 50 years - there's no difficulty keeping up for the near term. This list can grow to at least several thousand before Wikipedia has a problem keeping up.  And even then it might just be a matter of transferring the list to a database for automated display/retrieval/searching/etc. I'd be very pleased to be on that list by then. Ikluft (talk) 05:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Once commercial hops above the Karman line become regular events, best option to keep the list manageable would be to list orbital spaceflights only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:6409:5701:A12D:E996:921C:D6E1 (talk) 07:39, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Here are some quotes from Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson:


 * "It's incredible to think only 450 people have ever been into space; that's including all the Russians, all the Chinese and all the Americans put together," Sir Richard told BBC News.

(Evidently he's never seen this article.)


 * "We should be able to enable with our new commercial spaceship company, Virgin Galactic, to take maybe 1,000 people and make them into 'astronauts' in the 12 months once we start."

I expect he's being wildly overoptimistic, but if his figures are anything close to correct, at the appropriate time we might want to reconsider the definition of "space travel" being used. There's a big difference between going over an arbitrary altitude marker and actually going into orbit. Furthermore, the maximum height anticipated by the Spaceship Two is 110km, which is barely beyond the Kármán line and lower than the Calgary measurement and NASA's reentry altitude (see Outer_space). RandomCritic (talk) 17:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Reverted changes
Certain nameless users made changes to names and numbers which I have now reverted. One of these changes was to add in certain astronauts who perished in the STS-51-L and Apollo 1 accidents, but who had made no space flights prior to those tragedies. While I suppose these changes were made with the best intentions, it may need to be pointed out that neither Apollo 1 nor Challenger's last flight fulfil the criteria for a "space flight" under even the broadest construction of that term. Challenger disintegrated while still in the lower atmosphere, with a maximum altitude of less than 20km, while Apollo 1 never left the ground at all (nor was it intended to).

As for the numbers, only 24 astronauts ever left Low Earth Orbit. There were 27 seats aboard the 9 flights of Apollo 8 and Apollos 10-17; but Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan, and John Young each filled two of those seats, for a total of 24 individuals. RandomCritic (talk) 01:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Pictures?
I notice that the only astronaut portrait on this page is that of Ilan Ramon. In fact, that is the only section of this list that includes an image of any kind, save for the lead. I'm inclined to remove the image of Ramon for consistency, but I imagine that that could get contentious, so I thought I'd check here to see if there are any objections. I'd note that if the consensus is to keep the image, I think images of astronauts should be used in other sections. I don't know how we'd choose who should be pictured and who should be excluded, so I think the best solution is to not have any pictures. If I don't get any response here, I'll go ahead and be bold and remove the picture. 184.56.92.166 (talk) 18:28, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and removed the image. After some digging around, I noticed that about a month ago, a user added images of Ramon to every page that was even tangentially related to the astronaut. I've been removing those additions (carefully looking at context to not remove a useful image, of course), so I went ahead and removed it from here. If anyone objects, let me know. 184.56.92.166 (talk) 19:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Who is this person?
On the list there is the name of 🇺🇸 Pascal O'Neill. As you can see, it is red-linked. (It is also under P instead of O, but that is another matter.) I can find no outside source for this name. He is not listed anywhere else in Wikipedia. And the only Google hit is for this page. Is this a fake entry? I will remove it, but I want to make sure first. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 16:55, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Tracy Caldwell Dyson
Under what letter should Tracy Caldwell Dyson be listed. Both her Wikipedia article and her official NASA biography refer to her as "Caldwell Dyson" after the first reference. (This was addressed on the talk page of her article.) This leads me to believe she should be under C. However, on the index page to the NASA biographies, she is alphabetized as "Dyson, Tracy Caldwell", so even NASA is inconsistent. ... I will leave this up here for a few days, and if no response, I will move her listing from D to C. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 05:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

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Vandalism?
Hi

The addition of Johnny M Linnie on Jan 24th seems suspect, to say the least.

86.40.64.189 (talk) 14:14, 4 April 2018 (UTC)RD

Total
The total doesn’t seem to be kept up to date on a regular basis. As of now (June 17, 2018, 01:41UT), it still refers to November 2013. I will attempt to count the number of names, but I would please ask for a second count from someone else, in case I make mistakes… Thanks! CielProfond (talk) 01:42, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I have updated the the total as of December 4, 2019 and added a reference.Scrooke (talk) 20:06, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Beth Moses
The vexed issue of where space starts raises its ugly head with astronaut Beth Moses. Beth has flown to an altitude of just short of 90km which exceeds the US DoD/NASA definition but has not reached the FAI definition of the Karman Line (100km). If Beth is to be included in this list then the other X-15 pilots who have achieved astronaut status should also be included. Alternatively, Beth could be removed or a caveat placed on her entry. It's my understanding that there isn't an internationally agreed legal definition of where space commences but that the FAI definition is widely accepted for record keeping purposes.Scrooke (talk) 06:53, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Symbols
Some of the symbols, such as the black one, are not visible on a night-mode enabled mobile app. N828335 (talk) 21:30, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

If the symbols and flags were emoji they could be found from a text search, and possibly be sorted more easily. For example one can not text search for the star image to find all astronauts currently in space, but if it were a star emoji this would be possible. Jesseorg (talk) 04:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Article should be renamed to "List of human space travelers by name"
There are many named non-human space travelers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika, etc), after all — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.124.154.132 (talk • contribs) 16:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm ambivalent about whether a title change is necessary, but I added a note to the intro for clarity and to help interested readers find info about animals in space. -- Beland (talk) 07:15, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Challenger astronauts
I noticed Scobee and Resnik were listed with the death icon, even though the header says People who died training for space travel or died during missions that failed to reach the required altitude, such as Christa McAuliffe, can be found in the article on space disasters. I removed their icons, but later noticed that Onizuka and McNair also had such icons - I thought I'd searched earlier, must have somehow missed them. Before I compound my error, what's the appropriate resolution for these - should they or should they not be listed as having died in space, since they didn't leave the atmosphere? Tarl N. ( discuss ) 19:54, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Dick Scobee had previously flown on STS-41-C. Judith Resnik had previously flown on STS-41-D. Ellison Onizuka had previously flown on STS-51-C. I don't see anything on Gregory Jarvis indicating he had previously been in space, though the biography might be incomplete. (High-flying planes sometimes qualify.) -- Beland (talk) 07:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

three people only reached a sub-orbital flight
Who are the three suborbital FIA-critera astronauts? I suppose alan shepard is one. (though he later had orbital flight so it depends on how you count..) Who are the others? Gjxj (talk) 13:15, 12 July 2021 (UTC) edit there is a list here: Sub-orbital spaceflight Not clear how the number was ever three..? Gjxj (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

We should use the FAA/NASA definition of spaceflight.
"This list follows the FAI criterion." is an arbitrary decision, and the whole paragraph in the lead required to explain why people are not in the list proves that this is problematic. We even call them 'Space Travellers' but exclude them from the list, that can't be right?. Many sources describe Branson et.al as space travelers, as do their respective articles, so why not expand the definition and put them in the list where people will expect to find them? But at least some recognized authority they have been into space, Beth Moses article says she has been to space and is an official Commercial Astronaut.

Is there any reason not to do this or any alternatives? JeffUK (talk) 18:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)


 * One reason not to is that many NASA sources actually use the FAI description, (using my argument against myself!) https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/how-far-away-is-space/ ("the point where we consider spacecraft and astronauts to have entered space, known as the Von Karman Line")

First Australian
Chris Boshuizen is listed as "first Australian citizen in space". Please check to see if that should instead be Andrew Thomas or Paul Scully-Power. -- HLachman (talk) 21:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It would be safer to say he is the first solely Australian citizen: Scully-Power was an American citizen and Thomas a dual Australian–American citizen at the time of their space flights, as US citizenship is required to become a NASA astronaut. Subsequently, both of them wore the US flag patch on their space flights.
 * In this article it is implied by the author (though not in direct quotation) that Thomas doesn't want to be portrayed as and does not consider himself to be an Australian astronaut, though his personal view on the matter is probably irrelevant in this case.
 * Part of the issue may be that the standard set by the rest of the page is somewhat arbitrary. Anousheh Ansari and Carlos I. Noriega are described as the first Iranian and Peruvian astronauts, and both held dual citizenship at the time of flight; however James P. Bagian is listed as the first Armenian, despite not holding Armenian citizenship (or being born in Armenia). Michael López-Alegría, a solely American citizen born in Spain, is shown alongside both the US and Spanish flags, but William Anders, a solely American citizen born in Hong Kong, is shown with the US flag only (whilst being credited as the first Asian-born person in space). Kimberly Grey (talk) 16:59, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. I removed the template because it seems not so much a question of "dubious" but rather whether it's "close enough".  I inserted an HTML comment to refer to this talk page, in case others are looking into this.  --HLachman (talk) 06:02, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Altitudes??
I think that it would be very interesting to add the altitude reached next to every name in this list.

Does anyone know of a complete list of space travelers with their altitudes reached? 95.172.233.137 (talk) 00:14, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed page merger
List of space travellers by first flight is now sortable by name, which makes this page redundant. Rupertslander (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest per WP:MERGE, that this mainspace page be replaced with a redirect to List of space travellers by first flight, and that this talk page be merged into that article's talk page. I'd recommend also setting up archiving for that talk page, so that most of these sections will end up moving into the archive relatively soon. Regards, Tarl N. ( discuss ) 02:49, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A WP:MERGE shouldn't happen. The target article is already beyond the point where a WP:SIZESPLIT is necessary. Indeed, a List of Earth-orbiting astronauts should also be created, instead of the large addition that happened to the List of space travellers by first flight during November 2021; some of which aren't even first flights above the Karman line, for those people, or attempts thereof. I seen no harm whatsoever in keeping these lists separate. EP111 (talk) 01:17, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Flag icons

 * 1) Flag icons should either be replaced with the nation's name or have the name appended, the latter per MOS:FLAGICON. The vast majority of people will not recognize, for example, the flag of Kazakhstan.
 * 2) Also, they should not come first; the person should be the primary focus. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:35, 7 July 2022 (UTC)