posted 08-12-2007 09:42 PM            

(the term "astronaut" had not yet been coined)

The earliest use of "astronaut" that I can find on my own shelves comes from a Ray Bradbury short story, "King Of The Gray Spaces," first published in the December 1943 edition of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. In 1962, this story was re-named, "R Is For Rocket" and became the lead story in that 1962 compilation. Ray was even more prophetic: the story is about two young boys growing up together in a small town bordering a huge rocket base where they would stand outside the fence to watch the launches. The town was in, of all places, Florida! 1943.

posted 08-14-2007 02:03 PM               

The first known use of the term "astronaut" in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his short story The Death's Head Meteor in 1930. The word itself had been known earlier. For example, in Percy Greg's 1880 book Across the Zodiac, "astronaut" referred to a spacecraft. In Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (1925) of J.-H. Rosny aîné the word astronautique (astronautic) was used. The word may have been inspired by "aeronaut", an older term for an air traveler first applied (in 1784) to balloonists.

posted 09-06-2007 11:33 AM               

It is thought that the term 'astronautics' was first used by Belgian science fiction author J.J. Rosny in 1926. Astronautics and astronauts had certainly been accepted into the language by 1930. These words combine the Greek words 'astron'(star) and 'nautes' (sailor); thus, an astronaut is literally a sailor among stars.

posted 10-25-2007 06:26 PM               

The current essay published there was written by one of the participants in the 1959 selection process, and he sets much of this out.

The late Dr. Gamble remembers the term was chosen on December 1, 1958:

What Do We Call Them?

"When we started the job, we had a sense of unreality. Here we were, about to take the first small steps by men that would eventually lead to what, years later, Neil Armstrong called "one giant leap for mankind." This was new, unexplored territory. We had to plow new ground, full of stumps and rocks, with few landmarks to guide us. Remember -- this was two and one-half years before the first Russian, Yuri Gagarin, and the first American, Alan Shepard, would fly in space within three weeks of each other, on April 12 and May 5,1961.

"Oddly enough, one of the first hot issues was the names or terms. What should we call the men who would one day fly into space? At Langley Research Center on December 1,1958, we brainstormed, and every name mentioned went up on the blackboard. Of course, somebody said "spaceman" and someone else said "superman" and still another said "space pilot." But perhaps he would be a passenger instead of a pilot, so some wise guy proposed "man-in-a-can" Other suggestions were made, some kidding and some serious. Then one of us came up with a solid suggestion, "Mercury," which made sense. It referred not to the planet Mercury and not to the quicksilver metal mercury, but to the messenger of the Roman gods, who had wings on his heels and legendary speed of flight. But someone had heard the word mentioned before, so he called Washington. Sure enough, only five days earlier, on November 26, NASA headquarters had officially adopted Project Mercury as the name of the first American manned spaceflight effort, but not yet used the term publicly or even told us.

"With our best name so far already taken, out came the dictionaries and thesauruses. Someone found that the term aeronaut, referring to those who ride in balloons and other lighter-than-air vehicles, was derived from "sailor in the air." From this we arrived at astronaut, meaning "sailor among the stars." We thought we had actually invented a new word, but it later turned up as having been used earlier, in 1929, probably in science fiction. In any event, the term astronaut rang true and was adopted. The Soviets followed suit with cosmonaut, meaning 'sailor in the universe.

posted 10-28-2007 08:17 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
Well, I can see you gentlemen don't check in often enough over at scottcarpenter.com!

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