A more fundamental criticism is that laboratory experiments in space add little of scientific significance to what can be learned on the ground. One argument is that humans are not needed in space because the same or better work could be done with unmanned, robotic spacecraft. Perhaps, the strongest criticisms of the benefits of HSF are the low value critics place on the scientific and other activities humans conduct in space. The perception also is that it produces the fewest tangible benefits. Over the years criticisms of HSF focused on expense because it is perceived as the costliest space activity diverting critical funds from social needs. The development of rocketry that could place artificial satellites in orbit brought with it for the first time the possibility of attempting the realization of these dreams. #ANCIENT SPACE PROGRAM TV#Its wide and enduring appeal has been evident in the popularity of comic strips like Buck Rogers and Asterix, movies like 2001 and TV programs like Star Trek. It has been a major theme in science fiction from Jules Vernes From the Earth to the Moon to the present day. Fascination with the idea of people going into the sky for adventures in other worlds goes back to ancient myths. The basic driving rationales for human space flight (HSF) are rooted in age-old and persisting dreams. Otherwise, experience of microgravity is currently limited to parabolic flights, but will soon include sub-orbital travel when the appropriate transportation systems are developed and tested. There have been about 29 non-career astronauts and cosmonauts who flew on the Shuttle and on Mir, and more recently paying space tourists – Tito, Olsen, Shuttleworth, Ansari, Symonyi – spent 7- 10 days each on the ISS after selection and training by the Russian space program. Fifty years after Sputnik, The Space Race is of a very different nature.Īnother commercial facet of the race is private commercial space travel. European and US lunar satellites are also planned as well as landing robotic missions. In the meantime, Japanese, Selene, and Chinese, Chang-1, spacecraft are circling the Moon to acquire detailed mapping of its surface. The US is working on replacing the aging Shuttle with solid-booster rocket Aries 1 and crew module Orion to get back into the lunar race by 2020, this time with longer stays in mind. France, China and Russia currently possess such heavy launch capability. Mars is a longer term exploration target. Today's leaders are those with heavy launch capabilities as the next prize is once more the Moon. China is planning human lunar missions in the next decade. China launched its first human, Yang Liwei, in 2003. Many countries have sent humans in space either on the US Shuttle or the Russian Soyuz. It continues to this day on the International Space Station (ISS).įifty years later, there are 43 countries who own satellites of various types in space while France, Russia, China, Japan and India are displacing the US from the commercial satellite launch market. However, the start of a long and fruitful collaborative relationship developed instead between the scientists of these two competing powers. This, and the crash on the Moon of an unmanned Soviet spacecraft, led the Russians to withdraw from the race to the Moon. But the race that Korolev had wanted to win most passionately was won by the USA, when on July 20 th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the Moon. The USA followed very soon with the Mercury, Gemini and the Apollo programs. He completed a single orbit of the Earth thereby firmly establishing the Soviet Unions leadership in space. On April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to be launched into space from Baikonur. Warm air was piped into the capsule to keep the dog Laika comfortable amid the surrounding freezing temperatures, but rising temperatures due to thermal control problems killed Laika on the fourth day of the mission. These same German scientists and engineers joined the space programs in the USA and the Soviet Union after the war. It should not come as a surprise to anyone who had watched German progress during World War II in the field of ballistic missiles with the V-2 bombers. It is said that the west was caught by surprise with Pravda's headline, "World's First Artificial Satellite of Earth Created in Soviet Union." The leader of the Sputnik project was Sergei Korolev who remained anonymous until his death nine years later. On the 50 th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik on October 4 th, 1957, the Soviet Union rocketed into leadership in this new technological frontier.
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