Will Astronauts/Cosmonauts/Tychonauts make the best space travelers?

Russia. 105 men recently emmerged from a 105-day experiment intended to simulate a trip to mars. The experiment was the second for the institute, whose previous effort in 1999 ended in scandal when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls. Russian officials at the time downplayed the incidents, attributing it to cultural gaps and stress. Soviet engineers also tried a similar yearlong experiment, but that was interrupted because of unending conflicts between crew members.

While officials at the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems praised the experiment as a success and promised to conduct a 500-day simulation experiment later this year, some veterans of the Soviet or Russian space programs doubted its value. "This is nothing but a test for a long isolation of average people," A two-time cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev wrote in an opinion column published in the Sovietskaya Rossiya newspaper daily last month. "Such an experiment has only vague relation to understanding the possibility of interplanetary flight."

SO, my question is are trained astronauts, based on their psychological profiles as they are selected now, the best choice for an extremely long mission to Mars -or are they high-stress prima donas who'll tear themselves apart half way in? Is this an argument for more "average joe" qualities in space traveller selection?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090715/ap_on_sc/eu_ru...