Last night I was watching the movie Men with Brooms and came upon something I didn’t quite understand–One character (from Nova Scotia, I think) was an astronaut with the American Space Agency. Is this a real organization? Does Canada have a space program, and is this what it’s called? Or is it a fictionalization of NASA? If so, is NASA in the practice of training Canadians?
Canada has the Canadian Space Agency, which was established about 15 years ago or so.
Canadian astronauts fly on the Shuttle with NASA, since there is no Canadian shuttle.
I don’t have an exact answer, but I know that NASA is rather protective of their name and especially their logo.
In the commentary for the first episode of Farscape, the producers note that they wanted the character of John Crichton to be a NASA astronaut, and NASA would have been willing to go along, as long as they had final script approval. So… John Crichton has an “IASA” patch on his flight jacket instead.
I wonder if this is what happened here. I googled on “American Space Agency” and NASA was the first thing that came up, so it must be a made up name.
Also, the ASA top brass were a little crewcutty and brash, so maybe they were supposed to be a Canadian’s stereotype of American military.
Could be, but NASA is a civilian organization and not part of the military. (But most of the astronauts themselves are former Air Force and Navy pilots.)
Do not forget NASSA.