The first known usage of the word "astronaut" in the sense of "space traveler" was in sci-fi writer Neil R. Jones' story "The Death's Head Meteor," which was published in Air Wonder Stories in 1930, nearly 30 years before the establishment of NASA. "Astronaut" first appeared in a sci-fi novel way back in 1880, in "Across the Zodiac" by Brit Percy Greg, but he used it as a term for a spacecraft.

A revival of the Clifford Odets play &q ...

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