What Would Your Job Be on a Spaceship?

About This Quiz

Since the first days of American space travel, astronauts have come from a rarefied group. On one hand, most of them were ex-military—pilots and the sort. On the other hand, they all possessed advanced degrees in the sciences needed for the missions to which they were assigned. This is all for good reason. If someone flying an airplane encounters a problem, they can probably find a place to land and get it repaired, and failing that, they can at least bail out and survive. Space travel is another matter altogether. In space, if something goes wrong on a ship, the people on the ship must fix it themselves or else go up the proverbial river without a paddle. Any clashing personalities will produce genuine problems, because being locked in a confined space with people you don't like will put differences into stark relief.

As space travel moves into the future, our technology only gets more complex. The bar for the skills demanded of the crews of these future ships will only go up. Outer space is always outer space, where no atmosphere surrounds us to absorb deadly radiation, where it takes fuel to move or to stop and where exposure to the outside will result in grievous bodily harm and even death in seconds. The old skills of early astronauts are a foundation, but space travel of the future demands that people have jobs that match not only their abilities and education, but their character. Take this quiz, and we'll tell you what your job would be on a spaceship!