There's a long history of failed attempts to put American journalists in space. Now, Michael Strahan is going
CNN
"Being there at the first launch... it really was mind blowing," Strahan told his GMA co-anchors last month when he publicly revealed that Blue Origin had tapped him to fly on the next space launch, scheduled for Saturday. "I do believe that [space travel] will bring a lot of technological breakthroughs and also innovations to us here on Earth, and I just wanted to be a part of it."
And so too have other journalists over the years. The idea of an American journalist going to space has been in the works since Strahan was a teenager, but several attempts were thwarted. In 1990, a Japanese TV reporter became the first journalist to travel to space. Much has changed in the industries of space exploration and of media, but the significance of sending an American journalist to space for the first time still resonates.