By KIRAT RANDHAWA
Staff Writer
In the Astronaut business, there are only 48 active astronauts. In training, there are currently 350 men and women in training. The administrator of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, said that at the beginning of March 2nd, NASA will start taking in more people interested in the space business. Ever since SpaceX and other agencies have begun their expedition towards sending the first humans to Mars, the relevance of space travel has skyrocketed and has never been higher. The only other time space travel was this popular, it was when the United States was competing with the former USSR to send the first humans to the Moon. SpaceX and NASA both plan to send astronauts to Mars by the early 2030s.
Becoming an astronaut is no easy task. It requires at least one thousand hours of someone being a pilot. To add on, one needs to achieve a Master’s degree in any of the STEM branches. Those branches are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One also needs to obtain two years of work towards a Ph.D. again in any of the STEM branches. Overall, this would take 7-10 years of schooling or one thousand hours piloting an aircraft.