A demographic comparison of NASA astronauts and commercial spaceflight participants

TL;DR

This study compares the demographics of NASA astronauts and commercial spaceflight participants, showing that the latter are more diverse and globally representative.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel clustering approach to categorize commercial spaceflight participants based on demographic data.

Findings

Commercial spaceflight participants are older and have a broader age range than NASA astronauts.

SFPs are more educationally and occupationally diverse compared to traditional astronauts.

Clustering revealed five distinct categories for SFPs, reflecting varied motivations and backgrounds.

Abstract

The accelerated pace of commercial spaceflight is rapidly increasing the number of civilian spaceflight participants (SFP). In this study, SFPs were shown to be older with a broader age range than NASA astronauts, and have more diverse educational backgrounds and occupations. K-means clustering using demographic data showed that NASA astronauts fall broadly into categories reflecting military pilot training versus non-pilots, often scientists and engineers. Conversely, SFPs fall into five categories we label as Professional Astronauts, Veteran Adventurers, Young Adventurers, Celebrities, and Science Tourists. Overall, these SFPs are a more diverse and globally representative population than traditional governmental astronauts, and the demographics of each cohort directly reflect the mission objectives of their respective agencies and companies. Demographics provide insight into the goals and priorities of both governmental and commercial spaceflight organizations, and further investigation of these trends will be important as human spaceflight continues to change in the decades to come.

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