In an article on nos.nl let a number of Dutch space experts shine their light on the performance of the Oisterwijker. The question is: can Daemen call himself “the third Dutch astronaut, after Wubbo Ockels and André Kuipers (or the fourth, if you include the Dutch-born American astronaut Lodewijk van den Berg)?”
The FAA, which sets the rules for commercial astronautship with NASA, doesn’t think so. On the day of the flight, the FAA tightened the rules. In addition to having to meet certain basic training requirements and have been at least 50 miles (80 km) above the Earth’s surface, a person must also be engaged in in-flight activities that are “essential to public safety or contribute to the safety of human space travel.”
Daemen didn’t; he flew in a remote-controlled rocket.
Ronald Klompe, aerospace expert at the National Space Museum in Lelystad, reports to the NOS: “If I go on a plane as a passenger, that doesn’t make me a pilot either.”
Then there is the question of where the space begins. The international organization for aerospace, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), finds the Kármán Line at an altitude of 100 kilometers. According to the FAA, the boundary between atmosphere and space is 80 kilometers.
“The limit is fairly arbitrary,” says former director Rob van den Berg of Space Expo in Noordwijk. “Space doesn’t start suddenly.” According to Klompe, there is more to be said for 80 kilometers than for 100 kilometers: “Kármán himself [heeft] calculated a point closer to 80 kilometers: where the atmosphere becomes too thin for normal flight.”
Whatever space definition is irrelevant in the case of the Blue Origin flight. It reached an altitude of 107 kilometers, and Daemen does not get ‘wings’ from the FAA anyway. He is, however, the youngest person to ever have been in space, and he will start studying Physics at Utrecht University in September.
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