Normally scientists that study space don’t go into space because you need special training. However, one of the astronauts, John Grunsfeld, is an astronomer as well and got some time to use the Hubble Space Telescope as a reward for flying up to fix it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Grunsfeld – there’s a cool 3D IMAX movie of this if you get a chance to see it called Hubble 3D.
Not forgetting that the first one was Russian!
Btu with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the cold war, the US had no more incentive to pursue the “space race”, and a lot of excellent space project died in their egg… like lunar-base telescopes; mining hubs on mars, etc. which would have put many more men in space.
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