50 Years of Spaceflight

[Wanderlust]

The 50th anniversary of Human spaceflight is nearing! Here is a graphic highlighting the various vehicles that have flown people to space.

Space.com http://www.space.com/11348-spaceships-human-spaceflight-50th-anniversary-infographic.html

 

[sojourner]

Nice poster! Too bad SpaceX is going to miss making it by the 50 year mark. I have a feeling Dragon is going to be more historically important than SS1.

 

[Goliath]

Holy crap. I never realized just how much larger the shuttle was, compared to other manned space craft.

Anyway--cool poster!

 

[SchwEnt]

Yeah, shuttle is big. Even the guys who built it couldn't believe how big it was.

I read a story that when it was first being constructed out in Palmdale, they called it "the messiah"--
because the first time anyone came out to see the thing in person, they all said "Jesus Christ..."

 

[Wanderlust]

Nice poster! Too bad SpaceX is going to miss making it by the 50 year mark. I have a feeling Dragon is going to be more historically important than SS1.

I agree, though SS2 and the future SS3 will make some great splashes. I am pumped by both efforts, and even these of smaller efforts such as Masten Space and Armadillo.

 

[sojourner]

SS2 is still a suborbital gimmick and last I heard SS3 is no longer in development.

 

[Mysterion]

"Poyekhali!" Happy 50th, Major Gagarin.

 

[diankra]

The pedant in me can't resist pointing out that the figures for Salyut and Almaz launches aren't right - they only seem to be counting the stations that were succesfully manned, not the ones that were launched but didn't reach orbit, or failed before a crew could come aboard. But if it's launches you're counting, then you get a total of nine, not six.

Pedant mode off - a nice piece of work. Definitely one for the school science room wall.


Oh. just noticed. The figures for Apollo are wrong too - they only seem to have counted ASTP and the 11 flights in mainstream Apollo, not the three Skylab ferries!

 

[Noname Given]

As someone who was 6 years old when Niel Armstrong set foot on the Moon (watched it live); and who is now 48 years old; personally, I'm really dissapoint at how little progress has been made in manned spaceflight since 1961.

Compared to the first 50 years of atmospheric flight (where we went from the Wright Brother's wood and canvas planes to supersonic jet aircraft capable on Mach 3); we really haven't progressed spaceflight technology much beyond the state it was in say 1980; and that's sad.

I was hoping by thins tiime in my life, we'd have a manned research station on he moon, and a manned Mars mission. Now I'm left wondering if we'll ever bother to advance spaceflight technology much in my lifetime, or ever explore the Moon or Mars with any further manned missions.

 

[Wanderlust]

It will all happen very quickly now. Now that we have commercial companies doing the designing and building of the launch systems rather than NASA designing the system and having a company build it. NASA will now choose the best launch system like if they were shopping in a car lot. The previous system was extremely slow at developing new and lower cost tech.