46 years of manned space flight

[Sir Og]

On this day 46 years ago was the first human spaceflight. Launched on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 took the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, the first time anyone had ever journeyed beyond the Earth's atmosphere and the first time anyone went into orbit.

I think humanity has done relatively good progress in these 46 years.

[FrostyBoy]

yeah, 46 years is a very short time.

[Dis]

It's not that short.

In the beginning there was an explosion of technology. But lately it seems that things have sputtered out.

We've reached the moon, but haven't been further (or even back to the moon). We call it space exploration, but all they do is orbit around the earth a few thousand times, and fall back down.

Have we reached a technology peak? I'm going out on a limb and saying faster than light travel is not possible. Wormholes are a possibility, but I don't think we could ever create one. We'd probably kill ourselves in the process.

[Sir Og]

There is still a lot that can be done without sending people to far away planets.

I even think that sending people on the moon did not contribute much to the space effort. The USA needed that for publicity though.

I would like to live long enough to see pictures of distant earth size planets. That would really be something. There should be a way of doing this without the need to send probes. Even if there is need for probes there would definately be no need of sending humans in order to get an idea if the planet is habitable.

[Patroklos]

I think people you believe space exploration is stagnating are those who had an overly optimistic view of how progress would go.

If you think about the shear volume of technology required to reach the goals it is staggering. People thought we would go Moon--->Mars--->Milky Way. In reality we are doing all the filler work, upgrading technology across the board in things like computers and propulsion and more importantly making space technology useful thought things like satellites and cheaper obital lift costs.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dis
It's not that short.

In the beginning there was an explosion of technology. But lately it seems that things have sputtered out.

We've reached the moon, but haven't been further (or even back to the moon). We call it space exploration, but all they do is orbit around the earth a few thousand times, and fall back down.

Weve landed on Mars multiple times, and explored the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and asteroids and comets.

Fact is technology has advanced - but its robotics and electronics tech, much more than rocketry, so that its made it less cost beneficial to send humans.