ASTRONAUTS AS CHOSEN PEOPLE: Religious Ways of Understanding the Astronaut Experience and Life After Space

Abstract

Deana Weibel illustrates the many ways that astronauts themselves, seemingly superhuman in their capabilities, have come to take on a kind of god-like status in popular imagination. Presenting data from original ethnographic research, she offers us three case studies of American astronauts who identify as religious, who see providence as an active force in their lives, and who speak of their experiences as astronauts from within a religious framework.