More specifically, that history extends from the first mass-produced robot, a little boxy, stick-legged yellow metal man called Lilliput from the late 1930's, to robotic spacemen from the 1960's like Colonel Hap Hazard, a cartoonish white-suited astronaut with human features behind his helmet's clear face shield and a NASA insignia on his chest.
"I remember waving American flags and my grandfather telling me that the Apollo mission was an example of how Americans can do anything they put their minds to," Obama told the white-haired astronauts.
For the young, overly pretty crew of white and Asian astronauts, the mission initially entails watching monitors, twiddling dials and counting miles.
Just 15 minutes before the planned launching time, managers urgently discussed a door on the "white room" where astronauts prepare to enter the shuttle; it was not secured with its hold-back pin.
White was the first astronaut from the U.S. to perform an EVA or extravehicular activity during the Gemini program.
To be an astronaut: Be white, with any color Astronaut Helmet and Camouflage Boots.
After they pulled over, a pair of alien figures — one sporting a colossal, turnip-shaped wicker headdress, another swaddled in bubble wrap — ushered them into the truck's fog-filled interior, where they were accosted by astronauts in white Tyvek suits.
There is a narrative, but it swims murkily, the way Clune himself "floated like an astronaut in the white world".
"I call the Space Santa!" one brother or another would yell, lunging for the blue mercury-glass astronaut with a white beard.
The whole astronaut thing?
