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Given that Armstrong was no longer in the military and that NASA was a civilian agency, he was dubbed the first civilian astronaut to fly at the time of his 1966 Gemini 8 mission. Armstrong had served as a Naval aviator in Korea, returned to Purdue to complete his degree, and then joined NASA’s predecessor agency as a test pilot. So when Neil Armstrong was selected for the astronaut program in 1962, the choice was notable. Diversity at that point meant how many candidates were drawn from the Air Force versus the Navy (with some Marine pilots thrown in). Back in the heyday of the Cold War and the 1960s Space Race, NASA recruited its astronauts almost exclusively from the ranks of military test pilots. To whom the honor of “first civilian in space” belongs depends on your point of view. Indeed, private citizens have been joining astronauts in space for nearly four decades, a mixture of experts picked to handle specialized equipment being launched into space, members of Congress who had power over NASA’s budget, people selected as publicity stunts or in the name of diplomacy, and billionaires who could afford outrageous sums for the privilege to strap themselves into a Russian Soyuz rocket. The Branson, Bezos and Inspiration4 missions, while historic in their own rights, also represent new landmarks in a long-evolving effort to open space up to non-professionals. His membership card, numbered 1,043 out of 93,000 such tickets issued between 19, has been in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Gates,” the wife he assumed he would have by then. He called an agent at the airline and made a reservation for himself and “Mrs. Gates, a longtime reader of sci-fi and fantasy books, had seen some media coverage of Pan Am’s First Moon Flights Club, a marketing stunt from the now-defunct airline offering lunar passage by the year 2000. But I wanted to be a part of that shared moment of exhilaration and amazement … It’s just human nature to want to be part of that.” “It was unbelievable, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that feeling. “I kept saying, ‘there are human beings on that Moon!,’ says Gates, now 72.

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Like many who gathered around their TV sets to watch the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969, Gates-then a 20-year-old college student home for summer vacation-walked outside immediately afterward and looked skyward. It’s been 52 years since the artist Jeff Gates made a reservation to go to the Moon.

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TIME Studios is producing the Netflix documentary series Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space, starting Sept.

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