A name also thrown around for shuttle. Do a little digging and a surprising number of shuttle crews had ties to the US congress, either as relatives or who themselves would later become representatives. They even flew a handful of serving reps (ie John Glenn, aged 77). Nasa has always known how to foster relations with political power families.
Or they were from well-connected political families. The path for wealthy sons of academy ... elite military job ... politics, is well worn. Someone like John Maccain could easily be identified as a future political leader. He would have been a prime nasa candidate if not injured.
Go look at the resumes of astronauts, particularly before modern DEI stuff. For instance here [1] is Buzz Aldrin. A-student in school, varsity football center for a state championship team. Graduated third in his class at West Point with a degree of mechanical engineering while also competing in track and field. Enlisted in the Air Force as a combat fighter pilot where he saw plentiful [successful] combat including dog fighting. Enrolled at MIT and earned a doctorate in astronautics.
His thesis was "Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, the dedication of which read: "In the hopes that this work may in some way contribute to their exploration of space, this is dedicated to the crew members of this country's present and future manned space programs. If only I could join them in their exciting endeavors!"
He then began work as an engineer on Project Gemini. He then applied to become an astronaut and was rejected because he had not passed test pilot qualifications. He sought a waiver, and was rejected. Fortuitously for him, the next round of astronauts NASA sought required being a test pilot or having at least 1000 hours of flying time in a jet. He had more than 2,200 hours in jets alone. And at that point, he applied again, and was accepted.
---
McCain [2] - prep school (where he at least wrestled), graduated from the US Naval Academy ranked 894 of 899 students. Completed flight school where he was regarded as careless and reckless, having crashed his craft multiple times. He then requested a combat assignment. The first carrier he was on caught fire killing hundreds shortly after he arrived. He moved to another carrier and was shot down and captured a couple of months later. Not exactly "The Right Stuff."
But with a father being very senior in the navy, and the war hero thing, he was destined for politics. He would have been a useful friend to have. The crashing thing isn't a big deal. Few astronauts ever actually put hands on the controls. Maccain would have been a perfectly adequate payload specialist.
The crashing thing was not the point - it was that McCain tended to fail at just about everything he did. I'd agree he'd be far more likely than average to end up in politics, but there's 0 chance he'd ever have been accepted as a working astronaut. Seriously, just look at the CV's of astronauts who aren't there because of DEI. They are the best of the best who excel, to an absurd degree, in just about everything that they do.
A name also thrown around for shuttle. Do a little digging and a surprising number of shuttle crews had ties to the US congress, either as relatives or who themselves would later become representatives. They even flew a handful of serving reps (ie John Glenn, aged 77). Nasa has always known how to foster relations with political power families.