Lets say by some miracle we get a colony up and running on mars or something within the next 50 years. What career choices should someone make now to get the best chance of being selected then?
>>8145120
Any engineering you cuck
>>8145125
>marine engineering
>Systems engineering
>Civil engineering
>Manufacturing engineering
>Naval engineering
>Software engineering
Yeah no.
>>8145120
Anything related to using as few resources as possible as efficiently as possible. I'd recommend biology and food production broadly with that goal in mind, because most research in that field assumes massive inputs of given resources are available. Even if they're working on water efficiency, it's still on the scale of millions and billions of gallons. Start working on maximizing water efficiency in a closed loop system of 1000 gallons or something and you should be good.
A doctor.
>>8145135
Software engineering will most certainly have a role to play in exploration and colonization-related spacecraft. It's going to be lower level than what the majority of mooks today know as "software engineering", constricting (embedded, no high level APIs to lean on), and far more complicated than what we deal with on earth (radiation hardening), but it'll play a pivotal role.
What it really means is that somewhere on the order of <5% of current software engineers have the potential to contribute to spacefaring. The Javascript-adoring hipster won't stand a chance, but the guys writing kernels and drivers and machine control systems just might.
Join the Airforce and then go to med school.
You think I'm trolling but I'm not, you'd probably have an easier chance of being selected via this path than majoring in astrophysics at some shitty state school.
>>8146498
Or you just send an electrical engineer instead of trying to learn code monkeys stuff they're too stupid to understand.
>>8146498
Why would anyone bother with software engineers for those tasks? Electronics engineers are better suited for them. You know, EEs don't just fuck with wires.
>>8146511
This. EEs nowadays don't fuck with just the wires.
Also, it's a lot easier to teach an EE the CS stuff rather than the other way around.
>>8146511
An even balance of EE:SE can be incredibly beneficial if you're hiring engineers and not monkeys. As an example many of the upgrades SpaceX has performed on their Falcon 9 rockets have been software upgrades, which is great because it means critical bugs aren't physical, immutable flaws that just have to be lived with until the next round of manufacturing.
Software is leaned on far too heavily across all fields today though, I agree with that much. Things could be remarkably more efficient with just a little more hardware in the mix.
>>8146490
>A doctor.
And a geologist (perhaps rather called areologist since we are talking about Mars). A colony will need resources and need to know what resources are out there.
>>8145120
>Engineers, either mechanical, electrical, or aerospace most likely
>Doctors and medical scientists/biologists
>geologists
>Communications equipment
>Space launch operations (think of some leadership position probably from the AF or former astronauts who have lead missions)
If you're thinking of a colony the size of something like the movie the Martian had, as few as possible with the most skills.
>>8146565
But going that route won't give OP the best chance they want. There are a thousand excellent geologists, and a lot of them are looking for the same stuff on Earth that we'd look for on Mars, like water, so the advantages of specialization are reduced. It's too saturated to give good odds.
>>8145120
Planetary Geology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_geology
>>8145120
>What career choices should someone make now to get the best chance of being selected then?
Being a suicidal retard would help.
>>8146580
>There are a thousand excellent geologists
There are indeed thousands of excellent of any kind, be it geologists, physicists, medical doctors etc.
With competition like this I guess it is fair to assume you will need a PhD to be part of the competition. And have excellent health and excellent vision.
>>8145125
Not civil. Those guys are gonna be the first engineers to get automated
Why not just put a bunch of NEETS for space colonization. They are already used to living in small spaces for extended periods of time.
>>8148439
That are however not used to cooperation.
Also, would you want the ADHD of Reddit or the grand autismo of 4chan?
I think people would pay to watch this.
