ORLANDO, Fla. — The good news is people launching on space tourism flights in the future get to go into space. The bad news is that they will no longer be awarded commercial astronaut wings by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA announced it was ending its Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program that gave the commemorative title to humans that had ventured past what it considers having made it into space, 50 miles altitude, aboard FAA-approved spacecraft.
“The U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry has come a long way from conducting test flights to launching paying customers into space,” FAA Associate Administrator Wayne Monteith said in a news release. “The Astronaut Wings program, created in 2004, served its original purpose to bring additional attention to this exciting endeavor. Now it’s time to offer recognition to a larger group of adventurers daring to go to space.”
