On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:14:01 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

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.

Oops, I take it back. I guess that they have decided to start doing
so.

http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2...13-352031.html

"The AST also has begun granting commercial astronaut wings similar to
pilot wings and NASA astronaut wings to the flight crews of commercial
human space flights whose spacecraft reach an altitude of 80.4
kilometers above the Earth.

The first award was made to Mike Melville for his April 8, 2004,
SpaceShipOne flight, the second to Brian Binnie for his October 4,
2004, flight of the same craft."

Interestingly, though, they seem to be adhering to the Air Force
standard of fifty miles, rather than the hundred kilometers that FAI
specifies, and the X-Prize requires, which is why Melville got one for
the earlier flight. Also Wikipedia is wrong when it says (or strongly
implies) that the FAA was doing this in the sixties (those wings would
have presumably been granted by the Air Force or NASA). If they did
it in 2004, it was a first.

Not a full tee shirt. Settle for a tube top? ;-)