Astro-Panel Technician

In the year XXXX, Astropanels were first launched into space, closing the Second Space Race designed to aid the international energy crisis.
The first Astropanel technicians were trained to merely attune and maintain the Astropanels, providing much needed energy to the earth. The job involved spending months in a dedicated capsule outside the atmosphere with little food or personal space, and no gravity.
However, after a scrappy troop of technicians managed to stave off several stealth attacks by Big Oil Megacorporations determined to sabotage the project, by competing space programmes, and from unknown elements, the Astropanel Techs captured the heart of the public.

Cultural Reception and Role

Thanks to their logs, particularly the logs of their leader Dimitra Flanagan which were beamed indiscriminately down to earth to raise the profile of the attacks and stop them being suppressed by controlled media, Astropanel technicians became romanticised. They were portrayed in several key movies:

"The AstroTech Mission: the truth behind the legends," a documentary

"In the Rays of the Sun", a dramatisation in which all the astrotechs were played by impossibly attractive people, and the bad guys were, for some reason, from Iceland

"Love in the time of Space Suits", a NSFW anime focussing on a suspected but denied romance between two of the original Astro-panel techs

The popularity of the Astrotechs, particularly following a highly-publicised second space race, led to a huge surge in STEM teaching (and lots of children wanting to grow up as Astro-techs!). This in turn drove the next wave of the technological revolution.
Astrotechs became the icon of self-sacrificing scientists, trying to make the world a better place.

Training

Astrotechs are still a recognised and respected profession, requiring six years of training in both physics and engineering. Some of the finest training facilities compete with feeder pipelines to the various national programmes, but because of competition, there's a lot of burnout.

Career length

The record for longest time in space remains 437 continuous days, clocked by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov between 1994 and 1995. Nowadays, even with advances in safeguarding, scientists recommend no more than 365 days in space every five years, meaning Astrotechs spend more time developing technology on the surface than in space. Their careers generally span 30-50 years of age.