More than 45 years after the Mercury astronauts made their first brief forays into the new ocean of space, Earth orbit has become a busy arena of human activity. In that time, more than 300 people have traveled into orbit on U.S. spacecraft.

The first astronauts went along stuffed into capsules barely large enough for their bodies, eating squeezetube food and peering out at Earth through tiny portholes. Their flights lasted only a matter of hours. Today, we routinely launch seven people at a time to spend a week living, working, and exploring aboard the Space Shuttle. In addition to regular launches, crew members from various nations keep a permanent human presence aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The history of spaceflight has seen not only an increase in the numbers of people traveling into orbit, but also marked improvements in their vehicles. Each successive spacecraft, from Mercury through Apollo and the Space Shuttle, has been larger, more comfortable, and more capable. Scientists working inside the Shuttle’s Spacelab have many of the comforts of a laboratory on Earth, none of which were available when human spaceflight first began.

Some projects, like Apollo, produced stunning firsts or explored new territory. Others— notably, Skylab and the Space Shuttle—advanced our capabilities by extending the range and sophistication of human operations in space. Both kinds of activity are vital to establishing a permanent human presence off Earth.

Almost 50 years after the dawn of the age of spaceflight,we are learning not just to travel into space, but also to live and stay there.That challenge ensures that the decades to come will be just as exciting as the past decades have been.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments ............................................... 7
Introduction .............................................................................. 9
Mercury ................................................................................... 11
Gemini ..................................................................................... 15
Apollo ...................................................................................... 21
Skylab ...................................................................................... 29
Apollo-Soyuz ............................................................................ 33
Space Shuttle .......................................................................... 35
International Space Station ...................................................... 75
Appendix A: Shuttle Main Payloads ........................................ 83
Appendix B: Astronauts Past and Present .............................. 85
Appendix C: Acronyms ............................................................ 93
Monographs in Aerospace History .......................................... 97

Download U.S. Human Spaceflight: A Record of Achievement, 1961–1998

PDF format, 5.5MB, 104Pages.

Compiled by Judith A. Rumerman
Updated by Chris Gamble and Gabriel Okolski

NASA History Division
Office of External Relations
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC 20546

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 41
December 2007
SP-2007-4541

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This monograph is an updating of U.S. Human Spaceflight: A Record of Achievement, 1961–1998 (Monograph in Aerospace History No. 9, July 1998), compiled by Judith A. Rumerman. It extends the timeframe covered through the end of calendar year 2006. It also includes additional information, such as more detailed crew and mission descriptions, more bibliographic information, Shuttle payload information, and useful Web sites. It also includes a new section on the International Space Station, which did not physically exist when the previous monograph was prepared and published. In addition, with Chris Gamble’s guidance, Gabriel Okolski pulled together a new set of photos to illustrate this updated monograph.

For more information about NASA’s human spaceflight efforts, please see http://spaceflight.nasa.gov, and for more about NASA history, please see http://history.nasa.gov online.

The captions for the images in this publication include NASA image numbers in parentheses. The numbers with GPN prefixes refer to images in the Great Images in NASA (GRIN) photo database, available at http://grin.hq.nasa.gov online.

Thanks to Kipp Teague for all his help with images for this publication and over the years in general.Thanks also to the production professionals who made this monograph possible. Specifically, thanks to Dyana Weis and Lisa Jirousek for copyediting it carefully, to graphic designer Steve Bradley for laying it out, to printing specialist Dave Dixon for handling this crucial final stage, and to Gail Carter-Kane and Cindy Miller for professionally overseeing all of these production phases.

We hope you enjoy this updated monograph and find it to be a useful reference work.

Stephen Garber
NASA History Division

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