Update: NASA has selected all Interviewees

If the chatter on the AsHos board is accurate, NASA has selected all of its astronaut interviewees for the 2009 group. Unfortunately, I cannot count myself among them. Thank you everyone for following this blog and believing in me. Despite today's setback, I am optimistic that I will make the cut for a future astronaut group. After all, this was only my first try, and I am young enough that I have plenty of years left to work on building my skills, experience, and resume to better prepare me for the job. Let's see how I stack up to the stereotypical astronaut:

• Passionate about space (check)
• Meet basic age, height, weight, and vision requirements (check)
• Generally high level of fitness and athletic experience (check)
• Eagle Scout and community leadership involvement (check)
• Good communicator and public educator (check)
• Expeditions in extreme environments experience (check)
• Technical operations with high stakes decision-making experience (check)
• Earned multiple science or engineering degrees in different fields (check)
• SCUBA diving experience (check, although not much)
• Military experience (no)
• Private Pilot Certificate (no, although much informal pilot experience)
• Earned doctorate degree or equivalent (no, almost finished the Ph.D.)

I'm probably not going to join the military, although it would be fun to be in the National Guard or Civil Air Patrol. I think I stand a better chance focusing on the doctorate and pilot gaps, as well as shoring up my diving experience (As with most things in life, the main barriers are money, time, and motivation.). That's what I'll spend the next few years doing before the next application opportunity. In the mean time, I'll keep posting information about whatever grabs my attention on this blog.

I've blogged previously on how difficult it is to be selected as a NASA astronaut. The following plot shows this year's astronaut selectivity with NASA's new Ares I launch vehicle for scale (click to make larger). I'm proud to have made it within the top 13%. Now, NASA is focusing its attention on the top 3% who are being interviewed through the end of this month.


In other news, please mark your calendars for 10:30am-12:30pm Pacific time on Friday, January 23. I'm going to be the guest on The Space Show. Our main topic of discussion will be my analysis of the ISU and UND Space Studies masters programs. I believe we'll be taking callers with questions too.

Also, stay tuned for a couple of really interesting upcoming posts with complete astronaut statistics as well as how an environmentalist can reconcile with the pollution caused by space travel.