SWF Releases Timeline of Human Spaceflight Programs

Friday, August 31, 2012

With the success of the Shenzhou 9 mission in June 2012 China has become the third country after the Soviet Union and United States to successfully inhabit a human-made module in orbit around the Earth.  Much commentary has been made about the pace of the Chinese human spaceflight program, with some commentators suggesting that it is progressing at a faster rate than either the American or Soviet programs. 

Using open source data, SWF has released a fact sheet with timelines for all three government-funded human spaceflight programs from the initial orbiting of animals to the first successful docking of a human-occupied spacecraft with an orbital module designed to be inhabited. 

Although each of the three programs took a slightly different path to achieve this goal, in some cases combining or skipping certain steps, overall the three programs took very similar paths and lengths of time between 11 and 13.6 years.

The fact sheet can be downloaded here.