Sure, but when the astronaut application job posting recently came up, I was super excited. I would leave my technical job in a heartbeat to be an astronaut. But, the qualifications specifically needed specific things. Like, iirc, degrees in hard engineering disciplines. Otherwise it was a clear "No." I would expect them to mention things like really, really needing a hard engineering masters (at least, if not PhD) to even not get weeded out at resume review stage.

Also, I know two astronauts relatively well and they say the same thing when the topic has come up. One took a non traditional approach to being an astronaut, applying many times over years, but still had a hard science advanced degree. It's literally a requirement in the application.

To my chagrin, I will never be an astronaut.

Crista McAuliffe was a social-studies teacher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe

Where there is a will, sometimes there is a way.

>> NASA wanted to find an "ordinary person," a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit.

So i guess maybe some programs like this will appear in the future...

Failure is the best teacher, in that things working out the way you want them to almost always has a lower probability than the other way around (i.e. you're very good at basketball, so you should have a good chance of being in the NBA right?) This is why easy success stories are so demoralizing to people; they are hearing about the few who got lucky vs the countless ones who did everything they could to succeed but it just didn't work out.

How does that relate to failure is the best teacher?

Because amazing success stories are most likely due to chance, not action. This means that the people who succeeded, especially without first failing a large number of times (like applying to be an astronaut or NBA player; you get one, maybe two chances), haven't learned much about how to accomplish those tasks.

I don't think the problem is who they polled. The problem is that they're fishing out two-sentence platitudes that are not useful.

Huh interesting. You could have a website where for each job people want you find someone who failed at each point along the way to getting it, so you can know what to avoid doing yourself.