By Mark Stencel, Governing.com
If you ever dreamed of a career hauling freight into orbit or perhaps to the Moon, hopefully you got your resume to NASA earlier this month. That was the deadline to apply for 10 to 15 new astronaut slots. The agency's human resources staff estimates at least 3,000 people have asked to be considered.
The job requirements for space work are as steep as an orbital ascent. The agency is looking for U.S. citizens with engineering or science backgrounds to join the ranks of its 92 active astronauts. "Extensive experience flying high-performance jet aircraft" is a plus, one job posting said, although teachers with the right educational credentials also were welcome to apply. But be warned: "Frequent travel may be required."
When it comes to space flights, the amount of travel is changing, both in duration and frequency. With the completion of the International Space Station, now scheduled for 2010, the remaining space shuttles will be retired after 29 years of ferrying crews, supplies and equipment to and from Earth orbit. NASA's schedule calls for no more than 10 more shuttle missions, including one later this year to make a final round of adjustments to the Hubble Space Telescope. The rest are devoted to servicing the sprawling space station.
If that plan holds, curators will be preparing shuttles Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavor for museum displays by the time this summer's successful astronaut applicants complete their first two years of training. That means the new hires' initial indoctrination will focus entirely on extended space station stays. By next year, the orbiting outpost will double its occupancy to six full-time crew members (with room for occasional visitors). Later, the next astronaut group will begin getting ready for proposed missions to the Moon and Mars -- assuming the Bush administration's blueprint for human space exploration endures under the next few presidents.
How exactly the astronauts will get to and from space is somewhat up in the air, too. The shuttle's successor, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and its Ares I launcher, won't fly before 2015, five years after the reusable shuttles are mothballed. Some lawmakers are concerned about that gap. A one-year NASA reauthorization measure working its way through Congress proposes increased funding to accelerate Orion's development. The Senate version also aims to keep the shuttles flying a bit longer, a move the administration opposes.
The gap would leave NASA dependent on its partnership with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, whose Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft and its unmanned counterpart, the Progress cargo carrier, currently supplement the shuttle's work staffing and supplying the station.
With room for only three on each Soyuz, NASA's astronauts will have fewer flight opportunities, so some current astronauts may choose to use the interim to follow the shuttles into retirement. The new recruits will come in handy once the pace picks back up in the middle of the next decade. But for now, a quarter of the current astronauts have yet to fly in space. (All but seven of these 25 active rookies have been assigned to upcoming shuttle flights, and several more crews still need to be named, so all should get a chance before the program ends.)
Relying on Russia
Complicating NASA's medium-term plans is its contract with Roscosmos, which expires in 2011. U.S. space officials tell the Government Accountability Office they expect to pay the Russians $589 million for their services from fiscal year 2009 to 2012, with prices probably going up after that. They expect that they'll need roughly four Soyuz flights and six Progress missions a year to supply the space station after the shuttle goes out of service. But to continue working with Roscosmos in the years ahead, NASA says, it needs Congress to provide an ongoing exemption from a non-proliferation law that would otherwise prohibit it from paying Russia.
Other international partners plan to lend a hand as well. In March, the European Space Agency successfully tested an Automated Transfer Vehicle for delivering cargo to the space station; some of its member countries have mused about building a version that might be able to carry astronauts, too. Japan also is developing a similar supply ship it plans to test in 2009.
In addition, NASA is underwriting the development of commercial space transports it optimistically hopes will be available for cargo missions by 2010 and for carrying astronauts by as early as 2012. So far, the program has awarded $346 million to three companies. Two of them, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Orbital Sciences Corp., seem to be on track to eventually meet NASA's needs, but perhaps not as soon as the agency hopes.
Hitching a ride with commercial space haulers would be a new experience for U.S. space explorers, but it's still a pretty exciting way to make a living. The pay isn't bad, either: $59,493 to $130,257 a year, according to the official job posting. The funny thing is that a handful of wealthy space tourists have already shelled out many times that much to the Russians for a chance to briefly visit the space station. Even with all of the uncertainty over NASA's future, being an astronaut is still a job some people would gladly pay to do.
Mark Stencel is editor and deputy publisher for Congressional Quarterly Inc.'s Governing magazine and its Web site, Governing.com. For a complete listing of his columns, click here.
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