Is it fitness and transferable skills? Seems like it would be most advantageous to be some sort of scientist. With the likes of SpaceX making it all more automated, will the demographic of astronauts change?
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I do not think that is true anymore. By fighter jet pilot I will assume you mean any military branch not just the air force, the first US astronaut John Glenn was a fighter pilot for the US Marin Cops
In NASA Astronaut Group 22 which was selected in 2017 out of the 12 five are formed, military pilots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Astronaut_Group_22
Four of them are fighter pilots and one helicopter pilot. All of them have at least bachelor’s degrees in relevant files. Only two of the five were from the air force.
The reason you have a lot of fighter pilots and especially test plots is they are people that are calm in stressful life-threatening situations that can include high G loads. The Dragon capsule might be automated but if something goes wrong what might be needed is human interaction.
It is not just during flight, if there is a fire on the ISS the same applies.
This is the historical reason primary test pilots were chosen as astronauts. It might not be as relevant today but to say it is irrelevant is not correct.
All NASA astronauts are trained to fly jet aircraft like fighter jet pilots. They use the same T-38 as the US air force. This is done because the skill you need to master to handle an aircraft with stress, g-forces, and potential consequences of mistake is one of the best analogies we have down here on earth to anything that goes wrong in space. So all NASA astronauts get training to fly higher light jet aircraft, they do not get training for combat operations like military pilots would have
It is not uncommon to see images of astronauts in front of this jest with flight gear regardless of background. If you look at the astronaut in the group I linked to three of the ones with no military pilot background have that as their image on Wikipedia.
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