Help With Writing a Story

[Tarek71]

As soon as we have a uniformed, multI national space service/agency I think we will see the end of the officer-only aviator/astronaut. NASA, unlike NOAA, is not a uniformed service with its own ranks, etc. NASA has taken Air Force and Navy officer-aviators as its astronauts for decades. Not counting the civilian mission specialist astronauts.

As a result, the astronauts reflect the Navy and Air Force practice of having officer-aviators as the jet pilots. This may have influenced the 'everyone on the starship is an officer" concept.

But I think that reflects peculiarities of Air Force and Naval Aviator practices and the pool of potential astronauts that therefore is eligible for selection by NASA. Again, I think we will see a different composition of personnel in a future with a uniformed Space service with its own academy, it's own enlisted personnel, etc. Plenty of enlisted can serve on on aircraft in the Services. Most likely they will serve on spacecraft as well.

 

[Sgt_G]

We can only hope. ;-)

Back during and just after WW-2 and into the Korean War era, there were a lot of jobs that by regs or by law had to be performed by officers that today would make you go "Huh?" For example, in the 1930s & 1940s, there was a requirement to have a college degree to run a movie projector, even the little classroom models, and thus enlisted were not allow to do so. During the Korean War, they allowed Sergeant (E-5) and above to assume the duty of the Projection Officer.

As advanced technology becomes more commonplace, I foresee the role of the enlisted corps will continue to expand into fields that are still "officers only". There is talk of having enlisted "pilots" fly military drones (with a lot of push-back form the officer side of the house). It would not surprise me to see the first enlisted troop in space in the 20-25 years, but doubtful it will be any sooner than that.