"I want to be an astronaut when I grow up." Here's how you actually become one

On a July night in 1969, a nine-year-old boy on a small island in Ontario, Canada, watched a flickering television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. Afterwards he walked outside, looked up at the sky, and made a decision. He was going to be an astronaut.

There was one small problem. Canada had no astronauts. No space agency, no space programme, no path from a small island to the stars. By every sensible measure, it was an impossible dream.

That boy was Chris Hadfield. He grew up to fly three space missions, become the first Canadian to walk in space, and command the International Space Station.

This article is about how you become an astronaut. Read it a little more closely, though, and it is about how you become anything at all. A surgeon, a pilot, an author, a marine biologist, a founder. The destination changes; the physics of getting there do not.

Decide, then start acting like it

Nine-year-old Chris could not apply to a space programme that did not exist. So he did the only thing available to him. He began making decisions the way an astronaut would. At every fork in the road, big or small, he asked himself what an astronaut would do. Eat this or eat that? An astronaut would eat the vegetables. Practise or quit? An astronaut would practise. He could not control whether anyone would ever select him. He could control whether he would be ready if they did.

You do not become an astronaut on the day an agency gives you the title. You become one gradually, through thousands of small decisions made long before anyone is watching. The same is true of every serious ambition. And it means the work does not begin after graduation, or after the big move, or once life settles down. It is available to you today, whether you are thirteen or forty-three.

Study the mountain honestly

Most dreams do not die because they were too hard. They die of vagueness. A goal you have never examined produces effort that goes nowhere in particular, and the cure is simple, unglamorous research.

So let’s examine this one properly. NASA currently asks for a master’s degree in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering or mathematics), at least two years of related professional experience or a thousand hours as pilot-in-command of a jet aircraft, and the ability to pass a long-duration spaceflight physical. Europe runs its own selections through the European Space Agency, and the most recent one drew more than 22,500 applicants for seventeen places. A recent NASA round received over 12,000 applications and chose ten people.

Numbers like these are not meant to crush you. They are meant to replace fantasy with a map. Whatever your own ambition, give it the same honest treatment. Read the real entry requirements. Find people already doing the work and learn how they got there. Vague dreams produce vague effort. Specific ones produce plans.

Work backwards until you reach this week

Here is the trick that turns a mountain into a staircase. Start from the summit and walk backwards. A master’s degree in engineering begins with an undergraduate science degree, which begins with strong results in school mathematics, which begins with truly understanding this week’s lesson. Elite fitness at thirty-five begins with the habit of moving your body today. Astronauts even learn Russian to work with their international crewmates, and every language ever mastered began with one awkward vocabulary list.

Keep walking backwards until you collide with something you can do in the next seven days. For a student, that might mean picking up robotics or finally asking the question you were too shy to ask in class. For an adult, it might mean an evening course, a certification, or the first small project in a portfolio. The step will look laughably small next to the dream. That is fine. Rockets reach orbit in stages, and so will you.

There is more than one road to the launchpad

Look at a photograph of any astronaut class and you will see fighter pilots standing beside geologists, doctors beside engineers, even teachers. Samantha Cristoforetti flew jets for the Italian Air Force before she commanded the International Space Station. Mae Jemison was a doctor and engineer before she became the first Black woman in space. Jonny Kim was a teenager with no plan who became a Navy SEAL, then a Harvard-trained doctor, then a NASA astronaut at thirty-three.

Notice what this means. Nobody needs their whole life mapped out at fourteen, and nobody is disqualified for changing direction at thirty. Most astronauts are selected in their thirties, some well beyond that. What they share is not a single path. It is the habit of choosing something real and becoming genuinely excellent at it. Do the same in the direction you love, and doors you cannot currently see will begin to open.

Plan on hearing no

Now for the part most career advice politely skips. You will be told no, probably more than once, and how you answer that no will matter more than almost anything else on this list.

Clayton Anderson applied to NASA fifteen times. Fourteen rejections, spread across fifteen years, before he finally flew to the International Space Station. Astronaut Anne McClain has said that most of her colleagues needed several attempts, and that tenacity counts as much as talent. And then there is John McFall, who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at nineteen. He went on to win a Paralympic bronze medal as a sprinter, trained as a surgeon, and at forty-one was selected by the European Space Agency as the world’s first astronaut candidate with a physical disability.

Whatever obstacle you are picturing between yourself and your ambition, hold it up next to that story for a moment. Setbacks are not a detour from the route. Rejection, failure and plain bad luck are the route, and every person who has ever floated above the Earth walked straight through them.

The countdown is yours

Strip away the rockets and the whole method fits in five lines. Decide what you want to become. Study honestly what it requires. Work backwards until you find a step you can take this week. Become excellent at something real along the way. Treat every no as part of the training.

None of it requires permission, a particular passport, or a perfect starting point. Hadfield began on a small island in a country with no space programme. McFall began in a hospital bed at nineteen. You are allowed to begin exactly where you are, today, at any age.

So ask yourself the nine-year-old’s question, the one that built an astronaut out of an impossible dream. What would the person you want to become do today?