What NASA Teaches Us About the New Economy of Jobs

Studying the origins of the space age and its players can help us understand the birth and evolution of new occupations in today's world.

In 1958, becoming an astronaut didn't mean entering a profession. It meant inventing it. There were no standards, no training programs, no shared identity. And above all, an element that economic theory had always considered central was missing: the comparison with other professions. No other profession did anything similar, so there was no way to differentiate one’s profession from other lines of trade.

This paradox is the starting point of the study "Occupational Identity Formation in Unsaturated Spaces: The Layered Accretion of the American Astronaut's Identity" by Evelyn Micelotta (University of Vermont), Giulia Cappellaro (Bocconi University), Claudia Gabbioneta (University of York), and Michael G. Pratt (Boston College), published in Administrative Science Quarterly: how is a professional identity formed when there is no competitive ecosystem?

The answer, based on an extremely extensive historical analysis — conducted over 24,000 pages of materials including NASA archives, interviews and autobiographies — is counterintuitive: not by differentiation, but by stratification.

Accretion, Rather Than Differentiation

Existing literature holds that a profession is born by defining itself against other ones. But in the case of astronauts, this mechanism does not exist. "When you don't have another group to distinguish yourself from, then the problem becomes internal: it matters who we are, before who we are not," explains Giulia Cappellaro, Associate Professor of Public Governance at Bocconi.

Astronauts solve this problem by starting from what they already know. The first seven — the famous Mercury Seven — were selected from military test pilots in 1959. This became their "proto-identity." But it didn't remain unchanged: it was adapted, negotiated, transformed.

In the space of a few years, the profession evolved through three phases and multiple entry cohorts: the initial seven US astronauts (the Mercury Seven) were joined by nine in the second selection (1962), 14 in the third (1963), and further groups, up to a total of 65 astronauts analyzed in the study.

As the complexity of missions increased — from individual flights to multiple crews to the moon landing — the required skills also changed. First came the engineer. Then the scientist. But not all these identities carried the same weight.

Who Really Matters

The core of the astronaut identity has remained the pilot. Engineers were integrated because they are needed: the Gemini and Apollo missions required advanced technical skills, and in fact recent cohorts have much higher levels of education, often with advanced degrees in engineering. Scientists, on the other hand, joined later and under external pressure, particularly from the National Academy of Sciences. "It's not a harmonious fusion," says Cappellaro. "It's a hierarchy. Some identities are integrated, others remain marginalized." The fact is clear: even after NASA opened positions for "scientist astronauts" in 1965, they remained a minority (six in the first group) and were often excluded from the most central roles, such as mission command. The hierarchy is informal but rigid. The order of entry matters, the background matters, and above all, alignment with the original core of skills.

The Real Point: It's Not Just History

The paper's strongest contribution lies not in its historical reconstruction, but in its relevance for today. More and more professions today arise in conditions similar to those faced by early astronauts. Not in saturated markets, but in "unsaturated spaces," where consolidated roles and defined identities do not exist. The paper explicitly cites contemporary examples: sustainability managers, diversity managers and social responsibility experts, roles born out of regulatory or social pressure rather than the internal evolution of traditional professions. Today, the world of artificial intelligence is added to these. "Think about AI experts in companies," Cappellaro observes. "There's no shared model of what they should be. They come from diverse backgrounds — engineering, mathematics, business — and must build an identity while the job itself is being defined." But let's also consider universities, where new academic fields are being introduced and new faculty profiles recruited — leading to a stratification of the identities of academics at the organizational level.

Identities Under Construction

In these contexts, the problem isn't differentiation, but coordination of various identities. Is the person leading sustainability in an organization a manager or an activist? Is the person working on AI a developer, a researcher or a decision maker? There's no single answer. And precisely for this reason, as the case of astronauts shows, identity is built by successive additions.

Two variables make the difference: who controls entry into the profession and how "compatible" the new skills are viewed with respect to the existing core.

If there is internal control, new identities tend to be integrated. If selection is influenced externally, tensions emerge.

An Uncomfortable Conclusion

The study doesn't offer a comforting conclusion. There's no point in which identity truly stabilizes. Even in the case of astronauts, after more than a decade and 31 analyzed missions, the tension between pilot, engineer and scientist hasn’t been resolved. It's simply managed. And with the new external pressures of the space economy, future astronauts will likely add a commercial layer to their job description. This is an important lesson for today: in emerging professions, professional identity isn't something you find ready-made. It's something you build — and defend across the years.

"Professional identities are never neutral," Cappellaro concludes. "They are the result of balances of power, selection and recognition. And this is true today more than ever."