Slashdot Mirror
NASA's Search For Astronauts Yields a Deluge of Applicants
NASA, notes Ars Technica, has just produced a bumper crop of applicants for the coveted job of astronaut. 18,300 would-be astronauts applied to be part of the 2017 hiring class. It would be good to keep a backup job in mind, though:
NASA's astronaut applications have surged even as its flight opportunities have fallen by about 90 percent. Back in the early 2000s during the peak of the space shuttle program, NASA had more than 150 active astronauts. That's because the shuttle, with six to seven launches a year, afforded 40 to 50 annual flights into space. The number of active astronauts is now about one-third of that peak due to the shuttle's retirement in 2011.
With no Shuttle, and only one real destination (the International Space Station), those 18,300 astronauts will be whittled down to 8-14 candidates.
An increasing number of submissions lately have had text copy-pasted right out of the article, only to get mangled by Slashdot's inability to cope with UTF8.
It's 2015, can Slashdot please join the 21st century already?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thatâ(TM)s a pretty amazing turn-out. Iâ(TM)m interested to see how they plan to use this new crop of star voyagerâ(TM)s.
Iâ(TM)ll try not to get my hopes up given our current financial situation. But maybe theyâ(TM)ll be able to figure something out.
as immigrant workers
Seriously, if we have multiple human launchers, then Bigelow will be up there with their space station alpha that holds 12 - 18. NASA will no doubt want to take some of the slots so that they can train more ppl for going to deep space, moon, and mars.
But, where this will REALLY matter, is that Bigelow wants to put a base on the moon around 2020-2022. NASA will likely take most of the slots for that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
NASA's next job will be to figure out a useful purpose for astronauts. Maybe they can show on camera how they drink water in microgravity ? Or see how plants grow ?
probably 2% are baseline qualified
The figure is closer to 100%. That 18,000 number sounds suspiciously close to the number of humans whom, if properly rendered reduced and freeze-dried, would comprise a perfect nutritional supplement for a long term Mars Mission and colony. Everybody gets to go into space! It's a win.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Have gnu, will travel.
Though it seems they are seeking different type than before who were mostly test pilots (know of developmental programs, can deal with high stress emergency situations, cleared for security, used to guvmint bureaucracies). These days much of spaceflight time is transit (constant on orbit and hopefully some time will be long transit time from earth some place in space). There isn't a lot of fast paced dynamic situations i.e. in one week you go from launch to TLI, lunar orbit, land, walk around, take off, lunar orbit, TEI, and high speed re-entry. Of course need to have someone who can stay level-headed in case of serious emergencies in ISS, which are rare (they had a few mishaps on Mir).
Years ago I read in a article where candidates go through final interviews in front of a panel. Much of discussion on various developmental and research programs they worked on. Then someone in panel asks the $10,000 question, "So, why do you want to be an astronaut?" This question typically floors almost all the candidates. But one answered, "Uh, my dad was an astronaut, my grand-dad was an astronaut, it just runs in the family." He was chosen.
mfwright@batnet.com