<p>I wasn't sure of your yr group, that is why I asked</p>
<p>For everyone else, Bueno is a Good guy, he and his wife were ALWAYS the people that welcomed every new family in the squadron. The Goode family is the epitomy of everything that we love above about this life. I am sure that Bullet and I will be cheering and praying when we hear the countdown. He fought for it, he deserves it and we only hope G*D speed to him and his famliy</p>
<p>If you want to go the pilot route, the Academies are definitely the way to go. </p>
<p>I'll set back, just so everyone gets a background, there are two ways to become an astronaut: pilot and mission specialist. </p>
<p>The pilots clearly are the guys that fly the shuttle and are the commander of the shuttle missions/ISS missions. They're almost (if not always?) active duty military pilots. Its split between AF, Navy, Marines...much to my chagrin, the Naval Academy has the most astronauts of any University. </p>
<p>The Mission Specialists are just normal people, by normal I mean civilians with advanced degrees. There's a lot of PHD's in this group, also a lot of physicians, a few dentists and I know of one Vet who...I actually think was on STS-123. </p>
<p>So, if you really want to fly with NASA, yes, absoletly the Military Academies could be a good move. On the other hand, one of the guys I work with at Langley (Nasa Langley....we're right next door to Langley AFB, but its different) was going to be a pro football until he was injured, went back and got a degree in chemistry, started working for NASA...and poof! He's a mission specialist, who went up with STS-122.</p>
<p>So are the academies the only way to become an astronaut? Definitely not. But if you want to fly the Orion Command Module if a few years, its probably your best bet. </p>
<p>I hope that was somehow related to your question.....</p>
<p>THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE!! I've always wanted to become an astronaut and I felt really cloudy and fuzzy on the subject and path to get there. All of your advice is wonderful and reaaaalllly helpful. Please, keep it coming. :)</p>
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<p>A very quick Google establishes that one has to fly at 50 miles above the Earth's surface to earn astronaut's wings. This is well above the ceilings for both the U-2 and the SR-71. However, apparently the X-15 accomplished this feat and, thusly, several pilots wear/wore the wings.</p>
<p>BTW-</p>
<p>If you want to make your background a little more attactive (to NASA) for the astronaut route, you might want to take Russian as your language at the academy. This is not a big factor, but would be a nice to have...</p>
<p>Я говоры русски изык! Russian is a beautiful language. If you're good at learning languages, you would probably enjoy it. I am not good at it though, so I had to switch to Spanish. I will always love Russian though.</p>
<p>But yeah, Russian might help with NASA, and anything that makes you look that much better is a plus.</p>
<p>interesting; I never thought of that! Good point. :)</p>
<p>Falcons'11</p>
<p>Очень хорошо! I have been to Russia (Moscow and Star City) several times now, but still do not know more than a few key phrases. I notice you were originally from NC, where from? My extended family was from Wilmington and I lived in Salisbury for my high school years.</p>
<p>KittiesandFish11 - when are you graduating from HS?</p>
<p>Very Good! Soaring Dad a trip to the russian space center how cool. Potters boyfriend is at Embry Riddle in Az and has NASA aspirations.</p>
<p>i'm graduating this year, 2008. I looked at Embry-Riddle in Daytona and they were asking me to play soccer, but I decided USAFA was the way to go.</p>
<p>Soaring Dad,</p>
<p>haha, yeah, but I can't remember much more than that off the top of my head. I would like to learn Russian again some day, maybe through one of the Rosetta Stone software programs, but I don't have time now.</p>
<p>I'm from Charlotte. I've been to both Wilmington and Salisbury (been a while though). Nice places.</p>
<p>I might add the Language dept has lots of rosetta stone programs if you do want to keep on a language.</p>
<p>Yeah, I already looked into that, but there's a pretty long waiting list supposedly. I guess I could re-learn some over the summer, but I'm hoping to learn more Hebrew instead.</p>
<p>Hebrew huh? I should probably learn a few words in the next few weeks...</p>
<p>Okay, now that we're totally off the astronaut subject, I might as well ask. :)</p>
<p>If you've gone through a language in HS, all the way up until AP, can you take that as your language? Or are you supposed to start completely over with something new?</p>
<p>You can take whatever language you want that is offered. You are not bound to what you took or bound not to take what you already took. Many people come here and start at a higher level of a language they previously took (including me).</p>