Learn English – What does “spam in a can” mean

meaning-in-contextphrases

From Planet 51:

I never had the right stuff.
I'm a button pusher, Spam in a can.
I don't even fly the ship. It's all automatic.
I only got this far on charm and my rugged good looks.

Is "spam in a can" an idiom? Is it just for space and astronauts etc. or is it a common expression? And what's the exact meaning of it?

Best Answer

It's what the test pilots of the time called the original American Mercury astronauts, because the astronauts were not really "flying" the craft due to lack of control surfaces or (in the beginning) even windows. "Spam in a can" is heard in the movie version of Tom Wolfe's non-fiction book, The Right Stuff.

Although test pilots at Edwards AFB mock the Mercury program for sending "spam in a can" into space, they recognize that they are no longer the fastest men on Earth, and Yeager states that, "It takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on national TV."

"Spam in a can" is a metaphor evoking the image of the astronauts as nothing but meat in a metal enclosure.

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