The game allows for both a ground team and a space team of four characters each out of a roster of 10 (including the primary character), which implies that the idea is for the player to eventually hire enough people to have two dedicated teams and a couple spare characters to swap out at need.

However, gaining levels in a space skill doesn't give the character a skill point towards advancement, which I originally thought might be a bug... but your wiki states: "Skill points can come from any combat or support skill (first aid, salvaging, hacking, crafting and first aid)" That makes it seem more an intentional decision on your part than a bug, since space skills were excluded from that description.

If the player has a dedicated space team which doesn't participate in ground combat, how are they to get skill points towards advancement and ever get attribute points to distribute? Is the idea of a dedicated space team something that you're trying to discourage, or is the level progression of the space team something that will be addressed in a later version?

This sounds nice. Something like the dispatch missions in Finatl Fantasy Tactics Advance or World of Warcraft's garrison missions I assume.