History of spaceflight

For a list version, see Timeline of spaceflight.

Spaceflight, particularly human spaceflight, has long been a dream since ancient history, but it was only in the 20th century that it became a reality.

Prehistory

Fiction

Kaguya-hime returning to the Moon in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter

The ancient Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana, feature mythical Vimana flying machines that were able to fly within the Earth's atmosphere, and able to travel into space and travel submerged under water. At around 125 AD, a Syrian satirist named Lucian wrote a book on space flight called True Histories. The book was full of tall, unbelieveable tales and travelogues on visits to the sun and the moon. Today, the book could easily be discarded as the fantasy of a people of a bygone era. But it was significant in the sense that it kindled the curiosities of the people of the day and stimulated interest in outer space and space travel.

Arabic manuscript of the One Thousand and One Nights

During the Middle Ages, several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) feature fantastic tales of human spaceflight. For example, "The Adventures of Bulukiya" features the protagonist Bulukiya journeying to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam, and travelling across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun. "The Ebony Horse" can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction.

The 10th century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, may also be considered proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the Moon by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration depicts a round flying machine similar to to a flying saucer.

In 1638, a Christian writer from England named Wilkins wrote a book on moon travel and suggested four methods to accomplish it. Firstly, he said, the divine soul could take man to the moon; secondly, some large and powerful birds could transport man to the moon; thirdly, man himself could make the journey by tying wings to his arms and fourthly, he said, a flying machine could transport man to the moon.

Illustration courtesy of Civil Air Patrol depicting the legend of Wan Hu, wearing a Song Dynasty official suit

Early attempts

American author Herbert S. Zim claimed in 1945 that there is a Chinese legend where a scientist named Wan Hu (d. 1500) in the early Ming Dynasty attempted to travel through space with the help of rockets. In the story, Wan tied 47 rockets filled with explosives to the chair in which he was sitting and ignited them. There was a large explosion, but when the smoke cleared Wan Hu was gone and never seen again.

According to Evliya Çelebi in the early 17th century, the Ottoman inventor and aviator Lagari Hasan Çelebi, in an attempt to reach the heavens, launched himself in the air in a seven-winged rocket, which was composed of a large cage with a conical top filled with gunpowder. The flight was accomplished as a part of celebrations performed for the birth of Ottoman Emperor Murad IV's daughter in 1633. Evliya reported that Lagari made a soft landing in the Bosporus by using the wings attached to his body as a parachute after the gunpowder was consumed, foreshadowing the sea-landing methods of astronauts with parachutes after their voyages into outer space. Lagari's flight was estimated to have lasted about twenty seconds and the maximum height reached was around 300 metres (980 ft). This was the earliest known example of a manned rocket flight and an artificially-powered aircraft.

History

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Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's research was foundational to human space flight

The realistic proposal of spaceflight goes back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. His most famous work, "Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами" (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), was published in 1903, but this theoretical work was not widely influential outside of Russia.

Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper 'A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes'; where his application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets gave sufficient power that interplanetary travel became possible. This paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth and Wernher Von Braun, later key players in spaceflight.

The first rocket to reach space was a prototype of the German V-2 Rocket, on a test flight on October 3, 1942, although sub-orbital flight is not considered a spaceflight in Russia. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, which became the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

Human spaceflight

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Sergey Korolyov, one of the lead architects behind the Vostok 1 mission

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, aboard which Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit around the Earth. The lead architects behind the Soviet space program's Vostok 1 mission were the rocket scientists Sergey Korolyov and Kerim Kerimov.

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Kerim Kerimov, one of the lead architects behind the Vostok 1 mission

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Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, in his space suit during the the Vostok 1 mission

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on board Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. Both spacecraft were launched by Vostok 3KA launch vehicles. Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk when he left the Voskhod 2 on March 8, 1965. Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to do so on July 25, 1984.

The United States became the second nation (and for four decades, one of only two) to achieve manned spaceflight, with the suborbital flight of astronaut Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7, carried out as part of Project Mercury. The spacecraft was launched on May 5, 1961 on a Redstone rocket. The first U.S. orbital flight was that of John Glenn aboard Friendship 7, which was launched February 20, 1962 on an Atlas rocket. Since April 12, 1981 the U.S. has conducted all its human spaceflight missions with reusable Space Shuttles. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female Shuttle pilot, and with Shuttle mission STS-93 in July 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft.

The People's Republic of China became the third nation to achieve human spaceflight when Yang Liwei launched into space on a Chinese-made vehicle, the Shenzhou 5, on October 15, 2003. This flight made China the third nation capable of launching its own manned spacecraft using its own launcher. Previous European (Hermes) and Japanese (HOPE-X) domestic manned programs were abandoned after years of development, as was the first Chinese attempt, the Shuguang spacecraft.

The furthest destination for a human spaceflight mission has been the Moon, and as of 2008 the only missions to the Moon have been those conducted by NASA as part of the Apollo program. The first such mission, Apollo 8, orbited the Moon but did not land. The first Moon landing mission was Apollo 11, during which -- on July 20, 1969 -- Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon. Six missions landed in total, numbered Apollo 11–17, excluding Apollo 13. Altogether twelve men reached the Moon's surface, the only humans to have been on an extraterrestrial body. The Soviet Union discontinued its program for lunar orbiting and landing of human spaceflight missions on June 24, 1974 when Valentin Glushko became General Designer of NPO Energiya.

The longest single human spaceflight is that of Valeriy Polyakov, who left earth on January 8, 1994, and didn't return until March 22, 1995 (a total of 437 days 17 hr. 58 min. 16 sec. aboard). Sergei Krikalyov has spent the most time of anyone in space, 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 seconds altogether. The longest perdiod of continuous human presence in space lasted as long as 3,644 days, eight days short of 10 years, spanning the launch of Soyuz TM-8 on September 5, 1989 to the landing of Soyuz TM-29 on August 28, 1999.

For many years beginning in 1961, only two countries, the USSR (later Russia) and United States, had their own astronauts. Later, cosmonauts and astronauts from other nations flew in space, beginning with the flight of Vladimir Remek, a Czech, on a Soviet spacecraft on March 2, 1978. As of 2007, citizens from 33 nations (including space tourists) have flown in space aboard Soviet, American, Russian, and Chinese spacecraft.

Rockets remain the only currently practical means of reaching space. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies such as scramjets still fall far short of orbital speed.

See also

• Timeline of spaceflight
• Aviation history