On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:54:27 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article ,
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

Is that why the FAA calls them Astronauts (and grants them astronaut
wings -- c.f. Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie), too?

If you mean the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA has no
opinion on the matter, and does not grant anyone astronaut wings.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Melvill:
"In a ceremony two hours after landing, Melvill was awarded his
astronaut wings, specifically the FAA Commercial Astronaut badge, the
first wings awarded for a non-government space program and the first for
a spaceplane flight since the X-15 flights of the 1960s."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut_Badge:
"The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has granted commercial
astronaut wings to private pilots who have performed a successful
spaceflight."

If you were Henry, I think I'd be getting a T-shirt. Or is Wikipedia
wrong in both places?

I think the latter is highly likely.

Let's see (google, google).

Maybe they mean FAI?

http://records.fai.org/astronautics/current.asp?id=13

It doesn't say anything specifically about awarding wings, but that's
the organization that certifies such things. They were present at the
flights to do so, I'm quite confident, as part of the prize rules.