<p>Which university has the best program and is a good feeder into NASA, hopefully as an Astronaut candidate?
Caltech and MIT i would imagine would be part of the tech group.
would Rice be the main feeder, since Rice hosts the NASA base in texas?</p>
<p>CalTech and MIT are obviously huge. Michigan and Purdue are up there too. I am not sure about Rice.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/apollo-15%5B/url%5D">http://www.answers.com/topic/apollo-15</a></p>
<p>(Scroll down to the trivia section! LOL)</p>
<p>Aren't most astronauts and astronaut candidates either working professionals (teachers, doctors, researchers) or from the military (with tons of flight experience allowing them to pilot the shuttle) ?</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that any particular school is a 'feeder' for NASA. Rice actually doesn't host the NASA base. It's got a good mechanical engineering program, but if you're looking for a direct route into NASA, there really isn't one. If there is, it's not through Rice.</p>
<p>If you want to be an astronaut, I recommend looking into the Air Force Academy. Lots of test pilots and ex-fighter pilots for the Air Force are accepted into the Astronaut corps.</p>
<p>I agree, there really isn't a direct route to NASA. Obviously, a degree in Engineering from a respected university helps...and many of the actual astronauts seem to have gone to the USAFA, but there isn't just one way to go about it.</p>
<p>I don't think NASA astronaut is going to be a high demand profession in the near future. The shuttle program is deader than a doorknob. Are there even any plans for manned space flight beyond that?</p>
<p>It's a shame.</p>
<p>a friend of mine turned down UC Berkeley for Miami, because she wants to go in to aerospace engineering and work at NASA. I figure Miami is probably the best place to be, because of cape canaveral... to bad there arent many really good schools there.</p>
<p>The market for space exploration professionals at this point, what with Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne and the advent of privatized space flight, will likely come from private firms wishing to launch satellites and pursue other such private interests. You'll need test pilots, still, for all the new designs that are likely to follow through the now-open door. The age of astronautical exploration as we know it is over, but that's only because it's changing, and not because the frontier is closed. The demand for satellites is higher than ever these days.</p>
<p>It's just hard to say that there's a definite "route" into the field. You're going to have to pick a route that you think will work and be creative!</p>
<p>Human space travel <em>should</em> definitely not be on NASA's high priority list... although government funding seems to think differently. The best space research would be done on unmanned missions mainly because 1. lower cost and 2. any manned mission back to the moon or Mars wouldn't teach us more than we already know.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, that being said, a good engineering degree or Air Force/Naval flight training would be your best bet. Air Force Academy++</p>
<p>yeah. I heard a lot of NASA astronauts were graduates or Purdue.
when I was 10 I thought "hey, being an astronaut is too dangerous! I wanna work at JPL <em>_</em>"</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's an offer that 17 Stanford alums have grabbed since the early days of human space flight, racking up some dramatic statistics: They have collectively orbited the earth 5,831 times and traveled more than 151 million miles in space -- enough to get to the sun and halfway home again.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Something like 1 out every 9 astronauts has been a Stanford alum. I believe most are military academy-educated though.</p>
<p>Rice actually provided the land for the Houston space center in a land swap with the government. Because of proximity, it has a relationship for interns, but that is engineering, not space flight.</p>
<p>Wasn't really a completely straightforward land-swap... Rice gave NASA land and NASA built for Rice's Houston campus two large, ugly, government-looking buildings. =)</p>
<p>Yep, they are ugly :)</p>
<p>haha thanks for the feedback. i had NO IDEA that UofM and Purdue were the top.. theyre above-average schools, but nothing too outstanding. i wouldve thought an individual from MIT would have a better shot.</p>
<p>I'm not very athletic, mile time of 6'25".. not very good swimmer.. and my breathing isnt as top-notch as it needs to be. thats why i was hoping i could slide in the spaceshuttle not as an AIRFORCE-trained individual, but as a nerdy, science guy who could research atmosphere/bio on a manned mission to Mars?</p>
<p>Michigan and Purdue aren't tops. I do not recall anybody saying they were. MIT and CalTech are tops...Stanford is up there too. But after those three, Michigan and Purdue are the next two for Aerospace Engineering.</p>
<p>yeah sorry, i meant to type "...were the top for astronaut programs and selection" but i'm going to assume its only because the pool from those 2 schools is much larger compared to MIT's.</p>
<p>I don't think so. MIT has close to 5,000 (undergraduate and graduate)engineering students. Michigan has roughly 7,000 engineering students. So it is not like Michigan is much larger than MIT in terms of Engineering. I am not sure about Purdue. But MIT is not that small. CalTech on the other hand is tiny. They only have 1,500 or so Engineering students.</p>
<p>By the way, you described Michigan and Purdue as being average. They aren't merely average. Michigan has a top 5 or 6 program of engineering in the nation. Purdue isn't far behind. Neither one of those schools are as good as MIT or Cal or Stanford or CalTech, but Michigan is as good as Cornell or Carnegie Mellon in Engineering and Purdue is comparable to other top 10 programs.</p>