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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Scientists are definitely the person you want to be in an orbital station doing the scientific things.
But you need someone to drive and stay calm while being tossed outside the planet by a 20g force and I know no scientist that has 10-20 years of experience being tossed around at extreme g loads. For sure not one that can guarantee to not pass out during a critical phase.
But yeah, if you can get a clever pilot to get a PhD, then you have the perfect candidate. You don’t need him to be a genius, just to be able to not invalidate the experiments he’s running in space. Then someone on earth can calmly study the results while seated in a friendlier office, with gravity and decent food.
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