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Richard Branson, astronaut*


The Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for air sports that also stewards definitions regarding human spaceflight, defines space as beginning a hundred kilometers (62.5 miles) up (the Kármán line).
For example: The X-Prize was only granted for a vehicle that was able to cross this Kármán line.

However, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Air Force, NOAA, and NASA generally use 50 miles or 80 kilometers as the boundary.
Strange, as the Kármán line is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping, a spacecraft is a vehicle used for travelling in space and an astronaut is a person who is trained to travel in a spacecraft!

Since the Air Force grants astronaut wings to flyers who go higher than this mark, Richard Branson (a European) is mostly considered an astronaut in the USA.

Remarkably it's Jeff Bezos, American, who will become the first space tourist Billionaire to cross the Kármán line and become an astronaut in what scientists globally consider the sense of the word.

Needless to say it is clear now why Mars rovers are no longer calculated with American measurement units!

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