Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists.
Starting in the 1950s up to 2002, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military or by civilian space agencies. With the suborbital flight of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created: the commercial astronaut.
Definition
The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) Sporting Code for astronautics recognizes only flights that exceed an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 mi). In the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) are awarded astronaut wings.
Astronaut (song)
"Astronaut" is the third single that was taken from Simple Plan's fourth studio album, Get Your Heart On!. In December 2012, the song was played in orbit in space by astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Music video
The music video was directed by Mark Staubach and premiered on 19 September 2011. It was filmed in the desert of California. The clip opens with a message that read, "Being human is the most terrible loneliness in the universe" and continues to show a lone man exploring an empty space. He keeps looking around and around for something, or rather someone, to fill a void in his heart. The female lead for the clip is Caitlin O'Connor, a model/actress, who has previously played in music videos for Michael Bublé and New Found Glory.
The song was nominated in the category Best International Video by a Canadian band to 2012 MuchMusic Video Awards.
In the video, the man is seen with a name tag that says P. Cunningham. The same name was used for the drunk driver in the music video for "Untitled."
Astronaut (Duran Duran album)
Astronaut is the 11th studio album by English pop rock band Duran Duran, first released on 11 October 2004 (see 2004 in music).
This was Duran Duran's first studio album since Pop Trash (2000), and the first (and, to date, last) full album since Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) to be recorded by the most famous five member lineup of the band (the stand-alone 1985 single "A View to a Kill" was their last studio recording together.)
The making of the album
Duran Duran originally announced a reunion of the most famous five members in 2001, and began writing new music together in the south of France. They continued to write and record intermittently, working hard for a few months at a time, throughout 2002 and 2003. The band's friend Nile Rodgers did preliminary production work on several tracks.
Meanwhile, the search for a record label went on, complicated by the band's desire for independence, control, strong promotional support, and a commitment for more than one album, at the same time that the cash-strapped and risk-averse recording industry was unwilling to gamble on the "leftover fame" of a band best known for a series of 20-year-old hits.
