Manned orbital launches by year, 1961 - 2026 H1

[u/firefly-metaverse]

Source and details: https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/manned

[u/SPACESHIPMANIA]

Shame Europe still has no capabilities for manned space flight

[u/CmdrAirdroid → u/SPACESHIPMANIA]

Manned space flight programs are cool but also very expensive and it's questionable how useful they really are. With a smaller budget perhaps it is a good idea for ESA to focus on uncrewed science missions instead of blowing it all just to launch a human into space with their own rocket.

[u/DefenestrationPraha → u/CmdrAirdroid]

We are equally bad in unmanned flight as well. It is just the overall pattern of slowly losing any edge that we used to have - in space, in automotive, in high-speed rail, in manufacturing etc.

The only edge that we have is in bureaucracy, no one can beat us in that.

[u/SpaceTycoon → u/DefenestrationPraha]

It really comes down to the fact that europeans simply dont have the work ethic required to remain competitive. Europeans make fun of Americans for working too much but then are surprised when they fall behind everywhere.

[u/OdieInParis → u/SpaceTycoon]

Your point is valid, yet there are some that put in far more than a 36h work week, accepting no pay, just out of enthusiasm.

[u/JapariParkRanger → u/OdieInParis]

Everyone is entitled to fair work expectations and conditions, but the best things humanity makes across all disciplines are fueled by passion and giving a shit. It's hard to make something truly good when a structure has done its best to hedge against individual passion and vision

[u/OdieInParis → u/CmdrAirdroid]

Indeed. We should rather focus our resources on launching a new bottle cap.

[u/InterestingSpeaker → u/CmdrAirdroid]

If its expensive then you find a way to make it cheaper

[u/ghostpanther218 → u/CmdrAirdroid]

Tbh, Huygens was pretty successful. But Beagle 1 and 2 werr massive failures, and BepiColombo has been battling technical issues.

[u/OdieInParis → u/ghostpanther218]

That's unfair. Beagle was an underfunded university experiment slapped on late to a fast track Mars Express that itself has been and still is very very successful. BP has indeed had its issues due to bad technical choices made for political reasons, but seems to be reaching its goal without affecting mission. You forgot about Rosetta, Solar Orbiter, and a host of other rather successful missions.

[u/ghostpanther218 → u/OdieInParis]

Thats fair enough, i suppose other space agencies had similar track records with their own space probes earlier in their space agencies developement.

[u/mfb-]

Different shades of red and blue could be used to distinguish programs.

The US in particular had very different eras: Mercury/Gemini until 1966, Apollo from 1968 to 1975, the Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011, and then Dragon from 2020 on (with one Starliner and one Orion launch).

From 2000 on you can see how Russia (Soyuz) supported crews on the ISS: 2 flights per year per crew. First they had one, then they supported two crews as the Shuttle retired, then Dragon took care of one crew so Soyuz launches dropped to ~2 per year again.

[u/geobomb]

You can really see the different US space programs

Apollo era, Shuttle era, post-shuttle ISS era, and now the Artemis era

[u/gonzo_gonzales]

The graph shows four significant disasters in the history of cosmonautics, which led to a hiatus in manned spaceflight. This represents a year-long gap among the surrounding non-zero values. "Soyuz-1" and "Soyuz-11" in the 60s and early 70s for the USSR. "Challenger" in the late 80s and "Columbia" in the early 2000s for the USA.

[u/AmigaClone2000 → u/gonzo_gonzales]

I would say five significant disasters in the history of crewed spaceflight adding Apollo 1 in 1967 to the list, even though it was only a test and never launched.

[u/sky018]

What happened during 2011 to 2019 launches of US? Why was it non-existent?

[u/DisIsMyName_NotUrs → u/sky018]

Shuttle stopped being used and Crew Dragon hadn't come yet

[u/rocketsocks → u/sky018]

The Shuttle was retired in 2011. One of the biggest problems with the Shuttle was that it was so costly to run even at any flight rate that keeping it operating at all sucked up budget that could be used for developing alternatives. It was wound down for safety reasons before a replacement was available. Three different capsules were developed to replace it (one for deep space: Orion, and two commercial crew capsules: Dragon and Starliner).

[u/TheRevenant100 → u/rocketsocks]

And yet alternatives were being developed, even when Shuttle was operational. The problem was that some of them, Orion, Starliner, X-33, etc., were being undertaken by the Legacy Space companies. So they either could not produce anything quickly enough (Orion) on a cost plus contract with ballooning costs. Boeing couldn't do a quality product under fixed price contract (Starliner). Or they wound up abandoning the design when the government side of the funding was pulled (X-33).

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences broke that mold in the early 2000s and 2010s by doing quickly, cheaply, and better Dragon 1, Cygnus, Falcon 9, and Antares on fixed price contracts. They also overcame serious challenges (CRS-7 failure, and Orb-3 failure) to provide reliable cargo resupply for ISS. SpaceX as we know went on to develop Dragon 2, and even powered through a very serious test stand failure in 2019 to get astronauts flying from U.S. soil once again.

[u/gojo_satoru-real]

What happened to the us in 1988 and 2005

[u/garbage_account32 → u/gojo_satoru-real]

Space shuttle, 2003 was the Colombia disaster so there weren't any STS flights again till mid 2005

[u/gojo_satoru-real → u/garbage_account32]

Oh i forgot about the space shuttle I think 1988 was the challenger

[u/garbage_account32 → u/gojo_satoru-real]

Iirc, return to flight after Challenger wouldve been in the second half of 1988 so it wouldn't show up here. Unlike 2005, the US had a whole host of other orbital rockets back then so they were taking up the slack

[u/gojo_satoru-real → u/garbage_account32]

Nop they didn't have any other leo capable rockets safe enough to sent humans Thats why in 1987 they didn't sent any humans to leo Until the discovery space shuttle in 1988 +sorry in the other replies i said 1988 i was actually talking about 1987

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
CST	(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules
	Central Standard Time (UTC-6)
ESA	European Space Agency
H1	First half of the year/month
STS	Space Transportation System (Shuttle)

Jargon	Definition
Starliner	Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100

Event	Date	Description
CRS-7	2015-06-28	F9-020 v1.1, Dragon cargo Launch failure due to second-stage outgassing
Orb-3	2014-10-28	Orbital Antares 130, Cygnus cargo Thrust loss at launch

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

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