Sure, but there is a big difference between "obedient and expendable" and highly trained to do risky things that might well kill you (and would certainly kill a

Sure, but there is a big difference between "obedient and expendable" and highly trained to do risky things that might well kill you (and would certainly kill anyone not as highly trained). From a cynical resource investment perspective this is true, too: Infantry that you spend a week training, put in the cheapest boots possible and send to front to soak up bullets is expendable. Test pilots that are among the most highly trained pilots in your military and have decades of experience are not. I just don't think the picture where engineers build death traps and the generals order obedient pilots to fly them really applies to the type of experimental flight programs that eventually turned pilots into astronauts, where engineers and pilots would have worked closely with each other.