There are relatively very few Astronauts living among us, and we celebrate them (rightly so, they're the best of the best). But with the closely followed developments in the commercial space sector, how many astronauts will we need in the coming decades? Will there be 10x, or 100x astronauts? Are there estimates?
> how many astronauts will we need in the coming decades
687 people in space to date; Starship plans to carry as many as 100 passengers at a time.
I think it's safe to assume that there will be so many people in space in the near future that the meaning of the word Astronaut is not really going to hold up much longer -- not that it will go away. There are still "Aviators" in the world after all, but not everyone who gets on a plane or even flies one would necessarily assign that term to themselves.
WRT "NASA Astronauts": It's a bit of a loaded question too to single out "hired by NASA to fly to space" as the epitome of a space faring person. While there is currently a good argument to be made that NASA Astronauts have truly been a cut above, at some point it's almost inevitable that commercial/private space operations will eclipse NASA and the best and most capable people going to space will no longer choose to work a government job where they have limited authority over their careers. Take a look at the astronauts who have been waiting to fly Starliner - as storybook cool as it is, being an astronaut can also suck immensely.
I think its still not well described how much commercial activity nasa is planning for on the moon. I think its a little bit abhorrent because now we will have a precedent to exploit newly explored planets or moons for private profits. Hopefully we won’t be able to see the strip mines from earth.
Not in my solar system I guess! To me it just seems a bit backwards to what these scientific efforts are supposed to be about. Are we trying to understand more about the universe in a publicly available manner, or are we simply trying to create a revenue stream for private stakeholders? I am continually disappointed how policy writers in recent years seem to hold for profit stakeholders at even parity or even a superior consideration than the public stakeholders when it comes time to make plans on natural resources that really shouldn’t be unilaterally exploited by anyone.
Worrying about the visibility of activity on the Moon from Earth is about the most indolent form of misapplied thinking I can imagine. Absolute useless waste of effort. Get real.
There are relatively very few Astronauts living among us, and we celebrate them (rightly so, they're the best of the best). But with the closely followed developments in the commercial space sector, how many astronauts will we need in the coming decades? Will there be 10x, or 100x astronauts? Are there estimates?