Cosmonaut Careers are Plummeting

A career as a cosmonaut is losing its appeal for young Russians. Jobs in finance are more attractive to college grads, showing a shift in the younger generation's need for economic progress rather than pursuing star-chasing dreams. In the 1950's to the Cold War, Russia has always been a leader with space technologies. However, there are only 37 cosmonauts existent in all of the motherland. And there have been campaigns to increase that number via recruitment efforts in the colleges. So far, results have been dismal. On the other hand, every cosmonaut has a higher chance of getting into space compared to all the waiting-in-line astronauts or astronaut want-to-be's. And that's not including all the other non-American and non-Russian space-naut want-to-be's.

Russian cosmonauts are paid a monthly wage of less than $767 (20,448 Russian rubles) a month and also receive bonuses for flights.

Lack of mass interest in manned space exploration is pretty much across the board and across all cultures. The journey to becoming any type of space-naut is an arduous one and in these days, it's not as rewarding and receptive as it once was. We don't think of these guys as heroes anymore, but as just another scientist/engineer dude.

Perhaps, if we opened up the arena to everyday people to fly to space without the very requirement of all that official academic education, perhaps that might be an interesting draw. Of course there would be loads of training.

Diminishing Cosmonauts

Pay peanuts, get cosmonauts?