• Question: How long would you have to train to become an astronaut?

    Asked by FelicityP to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 14 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by JacobH.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      It takes several years. Usually you need some sort of degree, and often you need to be a military test pilot, or at least a lot of astronauts are. Some specialists come from other disciplines.
      However they all have to train for the specific missions they go on for a couple of years. Training includes all sorts of things, including survival skills in case they land in a jungle or something. Currently astronauts also have to learn to speak Russian, as they are launched on Russian rockets, so need to be able to speak to the launch team and fellow cosmonauts. So its quite an involved process.
      Of course there have been a couple of space tourists who paid to go on the ISS (more than 20 million dollars!) and I think they got trained and ready in around a year.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      Yep, a pretty long time. You ideally need to have a degree and then a PhD in a science related field (which would take you about 7/8 years after your A levels), and then the actually astronaut training is another maybe 4 years on top of that! Being Europeans we can’t become NASA astronauts, but would sign up with ESA – the European Space Agency. This is a brilliant article I found that you might like to read: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/How_to_become_an_astronaut

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