ESA announced Wandt's selection in November 2022. Now he's in orbit, less than 15 months later! This is the fastest time between selection and orbit in history

ESA announced Wandt's selection in November 2022. Now he's in orbit, less than 15 months later! This is the fastest time between selection and orbit in history that I know of. No doubt there are full-time ESA astronauts announced with Wandt who are now dumbfounded that a backup is flying before them, not to mention those in earlier batches. This sort of thing has happened in the US, too. When NASA began flying payload specialists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_specialist> on the shuttle, that program included people who had been turned down by the NASA astronaut program, like Charles Walker and Byron Lichtenberg. They got to fly before many who had been selected in the same intakes they themselves had been rejected from! Walker flew three times (!) in fifteen months, and Lichtenberg flew twice. (Walker was selected for his first shuttle flight in May 1983 and the first attempt to launch was in June 1984, so he would have been the record holder had that happened; he went up in August.)