10 Greatest Astronauts In Television History

By Tim Rich /

On Sunday I published an article about the greatest astronauts in movie history. That article got me thinking about some of the outstanding astronauts in television history. Surprisingly, there have been quite a few TV series featuring astronauts as the main character. Many of the astronauts you'll find in this article appeared in shows that ran just one or two seasons, so you might not have seen them. Some of these shows were pretty decent and it's unfortunate they were as short-lived as they were. For this article I'm not using astronauts from shows such as Star Trek and Firefly. As I stated in my article on movie astronauts, if a person departs our home solar system he becomes a spacefarer and not just an astronaut. Besides, how boring would this article be if it was filled with Captain Kirk, Deanna Troi, Worf, Will Robinson, and Captain Picard? I'm also not using documentaries or other real life shows about astronauts - only fictional astronauts can appear on my list. And finally, I'm trying to limit this article to astronauts who were the leading character or a prominent supporting character. No one-shot characters allowed! Let's get started, shall we?