75% are active-duty or former military (all O-4 or higher), and most are graduates of one of the service academies. Without taking anything away from their accomplishment, it's safe to say these individuals were already high-achievers to begin with.
I fail to grok the vastly disproportionate number of candidates from a military background. At the very least, it gives me a (mostly-unfounded) perception that the astronaut program must operate on a military-like hierarchy. On the flip side, this gives me great hope for non-government space operations a la Space-X.
It's not just any military background, though. Most of them are former pilots. Astronaut Candidates must have 1,000 hours of "pilot-in-command" time in a jet aircraft, or 3 years of professional related experience. The former is usually obtained through the military.
A civilian would have to complete training equivalent to that of a military pilot before actually being cleared for a mission. One-third of military pilots don't, though it's entirely possible the civilian could. However, it probably makes more sense to train those individuals who have already shown they can perform under similar conditions.
I'm not an expert but here's my humble opinion. Being an astronaught has very stringent physical and mental requirements. It's probably easier(or cheaper) to pick the smartest candidates from a group of very fit ones. To make a very crude analogy, it's easier to turn the star QB into a valedictorian than to turn the valedictorian into a QB.
I'm going to hazard a guess and say that military people tend to be much better physically prepared than anyone else for the forces they will experience during space missions.
It surprises me how different is the astronaut profile between the NASA and the ESA. Herein Europe they don't look for pilots at all, they mostly look for scientist that have published a lot and that have good public relationship skills (90% of european astronaut's work seems to be PR, they don't get much spacetime)
It was a disapointment when I learned that, I never had a chance anyway as my courriculum is really really far from being as good as these!. But being a pilot I hoped I had a chance some how. Personally, I think that it makes more sense to have scientists on board, the times when there was a pilot skill needed are long gone.
That wasn't my experience. I got through the first 3 rounds in ESA's most recent astronaut selection, and near the end about half of the candidates were from a military or commercial flight background. The rest typically had significant research experience but almost all them had some kind of flight experience too (private license, parachuting, stunt flying, gliding, etc).
That´s cool!!, I knew I didn´t have a chance but I wanted to see how far I could go in the selection process (not very far, I was discarded before the first stage).
The requirments in the application form gave the sensation that they were looking for a scientist role over pilot. I suppose you still need somebody that has some piloting skills (spacial orientation, fast assesment and resolution of problems and all that), but is not the main astronaut function anymore.
I was a bit dissapointed about how much of an astronaut work life ( I mean the whole time she is working for the ESA not just the mission specific training and deployment) is around public relationship almost as somekind of scientific embassador for his country.
I am courious about your experiences during the exams. How did it go?, what kind of people did you meet?.I don´t recall the test order very well, the first one was theorical?, then medical then interview?.
I´ll wait till Elon has need of some bigger numbers (and the requirements are lowered or better still plumbeted). A Mars retirement could be cool!
We signed an NDA so I can't say too much, but the first interview was basically an IQ screening - a full day of computer based tests for maths, physics, memory, spatial orientation etc. The second interview was much more in depth, hands on and focused more on team work. Both were physically and mentally exhausting.
The people I met, particularly at the second interview were pretty remarkable: smart, driven but also friendly and down-to-earth. It was quite intimidating to spend 5 minutes talking to someone and find out they have a PhD in bio-informatics, a masters in computer science and oh, by the way, they fly acrobatics in their spare time.
Still the whole thing was great fun and I came away pretty impressed with the process (and off course the few who got selected at the end).
Awesome thanks! It could had been great to pass a couple of levels just for the experience, but my online registration looked very very empty compared to the curriculums that you mention. Did you prepare for the tests?, I don't recall if there was any kind of study list available.
Man, I'm looking forward to the private spaceflight folks to get to the point where even near-sighted heavy mid-20s engineers like myself can go up and try to do things.
I don't even care if my capsule asplodes--if we're going to pull of colonization, we need more zerging.
EDIT:
Further thought...how depressing is it to work at NASA, I wonder? You get to work with the highest-tech and most insane things the human race has ever produced, and yet you know that the vast majority of the public doesn't give a hit and that every politician views you as nothing but an excuse to enrich the contractors in their districts. I can't imagine that's a good plus to be.
My brief-ish stint at NASA was a lot of work, dotted with the realization that the guy who prepared the .ppt slides for your project is going to get more recognition than you. I wouldn't do it again but it was totally worth it, we got to shoot some stuff into space :D
