Human Space Exploration
From National Geographic’s 50 years of Exploration
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The first great astrobiology prime-time television show? Perhaps. But from the imaginations of much earlier dreamers to the pioneers of space flight and rocketry, from Kitty Hawk to Kennedy Space Center we have lived President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to commit ourselves to, “before this decade is out, … landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” (delivered to a Joint Session of Congress, May 25, 1961). How did the United States come to those cross-roads? What role did the German pioneers of rocketry and the onset of the Cold War play in the space race? How did we get to the triumphs of Apollo, to decades in low earth orbit?
Additional Space Exploration Media:
- General human spaceflight info – history
- General human spaceflight info – present day
- Mercury Mission Control
- Current day Mission Control
- Launch Control info
- ISS history
- ISS Assembly
- ISS Statistics
Apollo 11 Moonwalk Footage
Charles Elachi speaks about the Mars rovers.
Stephen Hawking in zero gravity.
Roy Gould and Curtis Wong on the worldwide telescope.
Freeman Dyson and Project Orion.