I think it's a stretch to interpret it as petty when it probably just gave Trip a bit of focus and let his 8 year old nephew shout like "that's my uncle!" or something. Real life astronauts get asked these questions all the time and they're practically deified in our culture.
I don't hate this. Seems like Skydance has less conflict of interest (i.e. alternative franchises) than the Warner Brothers merger talks from December. Remains to be seen if this is a good thing from a Trek point of view but... Could be worse.