Astronauts & NASA personnel
Scott Perry said:
Do they have to be a certain rank before they are assigned, do you know? And what sections of the military are they assigned from? I wouldn't want to work on presumptions.
One link you might consider perusing is the astronaut biographies at
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/ You can get a good idea of what the mix looks like by reading a number of them and what they did before being selected for the corps.
In the days of
The Right Stuff astronauts were chosen almost exclusively from the ranks of military test pilots. With the advent of the Space Shuttle many are now scientists and engineers. Anyone can apply for the Astronaut Corps, but the chances are quite remote without a compelling background. As with all human organizations, it helps if you know people already there, though many others are selected too.
For the military, not anyone can apply, however. The Armed Services collect all of the applicants they have and pre-screen them before presenting the names to NASA. As someone pointed out upthread, astronauts come primarily from the Air Force and Navy due to the emphasis on pilots, but Marine and Army astronauts also exist. If you look through those bios you might even find an ex-Coast-Guard name. And as Berry pointed out, they remain active-duty military while assigned to NASA. It should be pointed out that their pay remains the same as any other servicemember of their rank (though they do get an off-base housing allowance, I believe).
In terms of rank, you would certainly have to be an officer before being considered, probably at least a Captain in the Air Force or the equivalent. By the time one became a senior member of the Astronaut Corps, Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel would be normal, but I doubt anyone makes General without being assigned back to a regular military post. There is one French astronaut who is a General in the Air Force of France, I believe.
For the Shuttle, the Pilots and Commanders are mainly from the military pilot background. The Pilot is the crewmember responsible for "flying" the shuttle, which practically means the twenty minutes at the very end where the craft is under manual control for landing. Effectively they are trying to steer an airborne brick through a 270-degree turn before landing on a runway surrounded by Florida swamp. Not an easy job. They also have "piloting" responsibilities on launch and other parts of the flight, but those are typically of the watching data and punching the right buttons at the right time variety, duties shared by the Commander and others. The Commander is in fact in command of the mission, and is also the one who performs orbital maneuvers such as rendezvous operations. Sometimes the Pilot will take the stick for these, as he or she is effectively a Commander-in-Training.
Now that's a lot about astronauts, but there are only 120 or so astronauts, and tens of thousands of NASA employees, and an even larger number of contractor personnel. NASA is a civilian agency, and its people are civil servants. As such they don't have ranks. But the management echelons have titles, of course. Director, Division Chief, Administrator, that sort of thing. And each job has a specified civil service pay grade, which is also something that should be publicly available.
Then you have the contractors, who are employees of Aerospace & Defense corporations such as Boeing. Much of the actual "work" is done by these contractors, with civil service oversight. But you will also find situations such as Mission Control where contractors and civil servants work side-by-side frequently performing the same jobs.
