Astronaut Hopefuls Take Written Test

The way to the galaxy is hard.

A written test to select the first Korean astronaut was held at eight places nationwide including a Seoul high school in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on September 17 at 1:00 p.m. For the test, 3,176 people applied including general citizens, soldiers, and flight attendants, who had already passed a physical test of 3.5 km running which was held on September 2.

Since it was the first written test to select an astronaut, there were many peculiar questions in it. There were one hundred and fifty questions in total, including eighty questions of TEPS to evaluate applicants’ English listening skills and seventy questions to test basic science and common knowledge necessary in space.

Among those questions of common knowledge, there were several questions asking about the universal environment, for example; “How is our body changed in a gravity-free state?” or “Choose the answer which is not able to happen on the International Space Station.”

Most of the applicants felt the test was “difficult.”

A committee of TEPS and four professors of psychology, engineering and mathematics made the questions for this test.

“We tried to have 80 percent of the questions to evaluate brain ability and 20 percent of those to ask basic science which is used for the actual life in the universe,” said a figure from the Korea Society Aptitude Development (KSAD), which made the questions on common knowledge.

Meanwhile, applicants were not satisfied to find several typographical errors in the test. Some of supervisors said, “The name of main character of ‘Samdae’ was wrong in the common knowledge questions, and there were some misspellings in the English questions.”

The result of this written test will be released on the evening of September 18. People who pass this time will be getting through three more steps and will be narrowed down to two people by January 2007.

kunta@donga.com