You must have an excellent memory, concentration and reasoning abilities, as well as good spatial sense and manual dexterity. You must be competent in biology, chemistry, physics and medicine, or be an engineer or pilot - preferably the whole lot. Oh, and speaking Russian would be a bonus.
These are the requirements for one of the most sought after careers on the planet: the chance to go into space. The European Space Agency has announced that from May it will be recruiting a new cohort of astronauts. But although the ESA has said it will consider applications from all 27 EU states, unless the UK government changes its position on funding human spaceflight any British applicant selected would be blocked from beginning the training.
"If you get selected and you are from a state that doesn't sign up then your country has to be make an official cost based decision on do we join, don't we join," said Dr Kevin Fong, co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine at University College London. He has trained and carried out research with Nasa and is one of Britain's best hopes in the selection process. "Governments can fox around the issue ... but if you have got a selected astronaut then you have got to make a decision." He said he would be applying.
Only seven ESA member states are signed up to the human spaceflight aspect of ESA's budget and Britain is not one of them. It is not clear how far ESA will allow people from states who do not contribute to go in the application process, the latter stages of which are extremely expensive.
Asked what would happen if a British candidate was successful, a spokesman for the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the public science funding organisation that contributes to the ESA, said: "It would be up to ESA whether they reject Brits on account of whether the member state was participating in the manned space programme."
Michel Tognini, a former astronaut and head of the European Astronaut Centre, said applications would open on May 19.
· This article was amended on Wednesday April 23 2008. The European Union has 27 member states, not 17 as we said in the article above. This has been corrected.
