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Depends what you mean by 'astronaut.' One of the interesting things about the space shuttle is that it allowed large crews (up to 11, but typically 7) of which
by Osmium 12y ago
Depends what you mean by 'astronaut.' One of the interesting things about the space shuttle is that it allowed large crews (up to 11, but typically 7) of which only 2 were absolutely necessary to fly it, so you could have relatively specialised people (e.g. scientists who were not also pilots) going up into space. Now, with the Soyuz capsule only having 3 seats, every seat counts again and we don't have that flexibility anymore. But the Dragon V2 seats 7, so maybe that's about to change :) and you wouldn't necessarily need to join the air force at all to get into space!
- mikeash 12y agoI wonder if the best bet at this point, if you're starting fresh, might be to join SpaceX directly rather than shooting for NASA. With all their talk of Mars, they must be planning to have their own astronauts at some point.
- Osmium 12y agoAs I understand it, it was actually a point of contention whether a NASA astronaut or a SpaceX astronaut would fly first. I think they decided on a NASA astronaut in the end, but it seems like SpaceX definitely has plans in that direction...
- Patrick_Devine 12y ago7 seats, along with a potentially much faster recycle time on the spacecraft. There were less than 200 shuttle flights and it ended up costing $1.5 billion per flight (with everything factored in), so the total number of people who get to fly into space on a Dragon V2 should be more than an order of magnitude more.