Early attempts
People have thought about space for hundreds of years. The first known book on the subject was written by a Greek called Lucius in around 300AD. His True Histories, described various bizarre trips to the sun and moon. According to legend, the first attempt to launch a man into space was made by a Chinese scientist called Wan Hu in the 1500s. He sat in a chair onto which he strapped 47 gunpowder bamboo rockets. He successfully launched himself, but didn’t reach space and died when he crash landed.
The first modern attempts to enter space were made by the Germans in the Second World War, using their V2 rocket technology. The USA continued to develop this technology after the war and successfully launched several rockets into space in the 1940s. However, in 1957 the USSR successfully put their Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit around the Earth using their own rocket technology.
The space race
The launch of Sputnik 1 began a space race between the USA and USSR. The USSR they put their first man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit in 1961. At this point, it seemed that the USA had all but lost the race until President Kennedy announced his intention to put a man on the moon. The race intensified, but the USSR continued to chalk up the accomplishments, including the first woman in space in 1963, the first space walk in 1965 and even putting an unmanned craft onto the moon in 1966.
In the end, it was the USA who put a human on the moon first. In 1969, Neil Armstrong took his first small steps in the Sea of Tranquillity. The footage of the moon landing attracted 500-700 million viewers around the world a record at the time. In the UK, people stayed up until 03:00 am to watch the landing.
Space shuttles
Another race began in the 1970s when the USA and the USSR competed to design a reusable space craft. The economic collapse of the USSR during the 1980s slowed down further development of the Soviet Space Shuttle Program. NASA successfully tested their shuttle prototype, Enterprise, in 1976 and launched Columbia into orbit in 1981.
NASA built five shuttles in total and space exploration became practically routine until 1985 when the Challenger shuttle exploded, killing all seven crew members. This disaster caused the shuttle program to be put on hold for nearly three years. History repeated itself in 2003, when Columbia broke up on re-entry, again killing all seven crew. This caused NASA to announce the retirement of the shuttle from active service in 2010. It will be replaced by the Orion orbiter, which has been designed to carry out extraterrestrial missions, including manned visits to the moon and even mars.
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