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Why doesn't Thomas Pesquet want children?

Short answer

The premise does not hold: no verifiable public statement indicates that Thomas Pesquet refuses to have children, and his private life is not space news. As for the job, nothing requires it: neither ESA nor NASA sets any family condition for selection or for flying.

Why doesn't Thomas Pesquet want children?
SIMULATION (EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITY EVA) - STS-23 (51D) - JSC

A claim without a source

Search suggestions manufacture certainties out of mere curiosities: autocomplete aggregates users' queries, not facts. No interview, no book, no lecture documents such a choice by the French astronaut. In the absence of verifiable statements, the honest answer fits in one sentence: the subject belongs to private life, not to space news.

European and American recruitment campaigns assess scientific degrees or pilot training, professional experience, medical fitness, command of English, and behaviour in teams under stress. Marital status and whether or not someone has children do not feature there, either as an asset or an obstacle. Many astronauts have become parents before or after their first flight, and several have launched while their children were still very young.

What the job actually requires

The real subject, and this one is documented, is absence. An assignment aboard the International Space Station represents roughly six months away from the ground, preceded by several years of training spread across European, American, Russian, and Japanese centres, with survival drills, constant availability, and heavy media exposure. Agencies have organised around this constraint rather than denying it: family support services, regular video links with the crew, visits scheduled before flights. That is where the compatibility between this profession and family life is actually at stake, not in a statement that does not exist.

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