Semantics and Other Silliness

You may have noticed in my last post teh interchanging use of Astronaut and Cosmonaut, adn there is a reason for it. No, I'm not just being my normal arbitrarily random self. basically when you go into space with the Americans, you are given Astronaut status. When you go into space with the Russians, you get Cosmonaut status. So, when refering to space travelers one is supposed to refer to them accordingly. Now, I would assume that if you're an American you get called an Astronaut regardless, adn the same goes for hte Russians, only then they're Cosmonauts. This mainly applies to people who are not american or Russian who go into space, I guess. What if the same person flew with both the Americans and the Russian? Would that make them a Asmonaut? Or would they just claim the title of whoever they flew with first?

Semanitcs aside, I've noticed lately I've been drawing a lot of comparisons between the American adn Russian space programs, and its kind of hard not to, seeing as they've always been the two giants whith substantial space programs. Also there is such a history of competetiveness between the two that it colors everything they've accomplished. So I should say that I do not favor one over the other. Both have made huge accomplishments adn huge blunders and dealt with both in their own way. Mostly I just like to point out that even now that the cold war is over, we still see vestiges of that old relationship between the two countires in the titles of their astro/cosmonauts.