Cool thread. Let me echo Santos though: Assuming the eagle re-lands in 2018 I would be astounded if the first mission isn’t either almost entirely in the Astronaut Corp 1/10/06 or candidates (pgs 38-39 of Santos’s link). If any crewmen are not currently Astronauts, certainly by using past experience, these folks are in Grad School or teaching/researching today. He/She is almost certainly in their late 20’s or early (maybe even mid) 30’s now. I would not be hugely surprised (a little) to see a 50-something fly on this or subsequent missions.
Let’s say Bush’s plan goes forward as envisioned and nothing major (funding/Nationalwill/War etc ) intervenes. A reasonable case for Mars 2030 might be made (Bush set no to timetable, but Space.com, most media outlets s and Marsnews.com speculate that this is a reasonable date/ also The European Space Agency (ESA) has the Aurora mission to put humans on Mars, also by 2030) So blah-blah here is some reasonable WAGs:
The Oldest crew member – the 45 year old Mars commander - is in College today, just getting back from a Bowl game in fact – maybe you saw him? He was shirtless and painted in his team’s colors
The Youngest crew member - Mission Specialist, 33, is a 9 year old 4th grader with a precocious interest in rocks and uncanny ability to find fossils that her Dad is encouraging in her.
The other 7 crewmen are aged in between. All excel in their school-work (where they are now: grade, high school and college)
Here is the link –with qualification requirements. They take 20 new ones every year.
On the Military issue: there is no requirement to be Military (but to be a Pilot (as opposed to a Mission specialist) you need 1000 hours in a jet to qualify to even apply and that can be, difficult, if you aren’t military.
Okay. show me the Chinese timeline for going to the Moon, and we can discuss that too. As I have stated, there were no nationality restrictions in the OP.
Thanks, jimmmy. I may have got the ages wrong, but your reply was just the kind of discussion I was looking for.
My OP was inspired by one of my favorite scenes in the HBO miniseries, “From The Earth To The Moon”, when Deke Slayton calls the Astronaut Corps into his office and tells them that, he doesn’t know exactly who, but that the first man to set foot on the Moon just walked into his office and sat down. And the second. And the third. And so on.
Someday, soon, that scene is going to be repeated. And since it is almost certain that the first Mars Astronauts will be Lunar veterans, He or she will be in that room, too.
You’re right, Neil Armstrong was considered a civilian because while he had been a Navy pilot (he flew combat missions off the aircraft carrier Essex during the Korean war), he was a civilian test pilot for quite a few years in between. The rest of the moonwalkers had gone directly from being military pilots to becoming astronauts. As h.sapiens said, Harrison Schmitt was the only totally non-military astronaut to walk on the moon.