Do You Dream of Becoming an Astronaut? Here’s How to Make It a Reality

Many people dream of becoming an astronaut, but to achieve the dream, you have to know the steps to get there. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to potentially get to space, even if you don’t rely solely on NASA. Today we’ll talk about the many paths you can potentially take to reach the stars.

General Preparation: Areas of Study, Required Skills, Licensing, Training

The first thing to understand is that becoming an astronaut is quite difficult. It’s a demanding job with many aspiring candidates hoping to make the cut. Competition is fierce, as only exceptional people can even hope to become an astronaut in the first place. That said, the official requirements for being an astronaut will vary depending on a number of factors.

In general, you’ll need a strong background in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), though it can’t be literally any degree in these areas. For example, social sciences, nursing, and psychology aren’t the types of STEM education an astronaut typically needs. Furthermore, you’ll also need other related experience, like piloting aircraft or partaking in remote expeditions.

This means that you’re not going to become an astronaut at a particularly young age. Most professional astronauts aren’t even hired until they are in their thirties at least, meaning they are expected to already have a decade of relevant experience in the aforementioned areas.

Even then, if you are hired as a professional astronaut, you will then have around two years of training to qualify for space travel, and there could be even more years of mission training on top of that. The bar for these positions is very high, with many aspiring astronauts having to apply multiple times before ever getting the position.

The NASA Pipeline

If you’re an American or plan to be one, NASA is probably your perceived ticket into space, being the only government agency that sends people up there. While there are other options, NASA is the dream for many people and arguably one of the more common routes. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, NASA has strict requirements for its astronauts.

Aside from being a U.S. citizen, you will also need a master’s degree or equivalent experience in a STEM field, two years of relevant experience in that field, or at least one thousand hours of aircraft piloting time as the lead pilot in command (so not a copilot or someone training under another pilot). The exact type of piloting is not necessarily important, as you could be an airline or military pilot.

Assuming you have all of that, you’ll still have to pass a demanding physical. The thing is, serious candidates not only meet these requirements, but they often greatly surpass them as well, and many even have experience in isolated, confined environments that serve as a type of preparation for space.

Finally, even after all of this, being a NASA astronaut does not mean immediately going into space. You could spend years on the ground before getting slotted for an actual mission to space. You’d still be busy on the ground, helping develop spacecraft, supporting other missions, conducting research or tests, and performing other tasks for the agency.

That said, it’s good to manage your expectations and know what it’s really like to work for NASA. Being an astronaut is the dream, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a tough path to walk and master. If you want more information about NASA’s requirements and expectations for astronauts, they’ve provided a summary of their requirements.

International Agencies

Naturally, NASA is not the only space agency in the world. There are several others across the globe, including the Canadian Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the European Space Agency.

Now, unfortunately, the only nations that have launched manned missions to space thus far are the United States, Russia, and China. The other space agencies I’ve mentioned tend to send their astronauts into space with the help of NASA or ROSCOSMOS (the Russian space agency). So you may have a smaller chance of going to space if you worked for one of these agencies, but they do still send astronauts up with help from other agencies.

In particular, the European Space Agency is worth noting due to a few of their unique policies. They are now accepting astronauts with physical disabilities, and they even have a reserve astronaut program in which you would work another job after being selected but could be called on for a space mission at any time. This means the ESA might be the best option for certain people that want to be official agency astronauts.

As stated previously, Russia and China have both sent people into space on their own, but working for them might be complicated. China runs an independent space program, and Russia, despite being an ISS partner, is also seeking to launch an independent program since they have estranged themselves from their space partners lately.

At any rate, if you are interested in becoming an astronaut with any of these space agencies, you’d be best off visiting their website to learn their requirements and the feasibility of working with them. They will each have their own rules and restrictions, and we can’t possibly go into each individual agency in great detail right here.

Private Companies and Tourism

Space tourism is a fairly new concept, with people who don’t qualify as astronauts simply paying money to be brought into space by those who are qualified. If your dream is to become an astronaut, space tourism doesn’t really achieve that. But if your goal is simply to go to space at all, it may be a viable, if expensive, option.

Companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are already offering flights that go beyond the boundary of the atmosphere and into space, though it’s still much lower than the distance of the ISS. But hey, space is space, right? There wouldn’t be much room to complain about that kind of opportunity.

That said, you would need incredible amounts of money to do this. Seats for these flights generally cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the type of service where they don’t even give you an outright price on a web page, you have to actually call for pricing. Needless to say, it’s more money than most people have ready to spend.

There is a nonprofit organization called Space for Humanity that occasionally opens up calls for people to participate in tourist flights, though they generally try to provide this opportunity to those from countries that have been underrepresented in space flight thus far. That doesn’t mean they’ll automatically say no to Americans, but it’s still worth noting.

Admittedly, space tourism is going to be pretty selective for the foreseeable future. It’s prohibitively expensive right now, but that could change as space travel continues to advance. There will likely be more opportunities for space tourism in the coming decades, and it will likely become somewhat more affordable as well.

Regardless of how the pricing will change in the future, if you absolutely want to go to space at any cost in your lifetime, you may want to start saving up money for a tourist flight at some point. Even if it becomes more affordable, relatively speaking, going to space will probably never be “cheap” in our lifetimes.

The Cupola, developed by NASA.

Another possibility is looking into private companies such as SpaceX and Axiom Space, which obviously need their own astronauts to take their craft into space, or sometimes just need other types of professionals along the ride for a given mission.

The exact path to being an astronaut for these organizations can be found on their websites, though just like government space agencies, you will probably need a lot of experience and special training to have a chance of getting such a position.

Adjacent Careers and Alternatives

Ultimately, humanity is currently in a period where only a small handful of people get to go to space for any reason. It’s admittedly a little depressing, but if you’re determined to at least engage with space exploration in any possible way, there are plenty of ways to do that even if you don’t become an astronaut.

For example, there are private academies, analog missions, and research studies that could allow you to do activities similar to an astronaut, such as working in spacesuits or conducting remote research. You might not get the same views, but it’s at least adjacent to the profession and what people in it may experience.

There are also zero-gravity and parabolic flights. These flights don’t take you to space, but they will let you experience microgravity or zero gravity for a few seconds at a time. Private companies such as Novespace and Zero-G use special aircraft to achieve this effect, and while tickets for these flights are certainly expensive (around $10,000, usually) they are exponentially more affordable than actual flights to space.

Finally, although they aren’t quite ready yet, there are also some private balloon companies working on missions that will bring tourists to the edge of space, allowing them to see the curvature of the Earth and the true inky blackness of space. Seats on these balloons could be around $50,000, but it would provide a longer experience than the aforementioned parabolic flights as well.

As with the actual flights to space mentioned before, these types of experiences are also likely to become more affordable in the future as technology develops, but it would still be a good idea to start saving for them if you’re determined to employ such services. They too will probably not be “cheap” for many, many decades.

Ultimately, there are more paths to get to space than there have ever been before, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simple or easy prospect. You will either need years of education and training or lots of money if you want to go to space no matter what. The unfortunate reality is that we’re still at a stage in history where space travel is considered an elite activity.

That said, if you just can’t get enough of the stars, there are plenty of ways you can appreciate the cosmos in the meantime from right here on Earth.