Evolution of the Human Space Program: The Human Element

For millennia, humans have yearned to explore the unknown. Looking into the night sky, the thousands of generations before us, wondered what was out there. It was not until the 19th century that one could be above the ground in a balloon. The Wrights conquered flight in the early 20th century and Goddard developed rocketry in America in the 1920s—but it was a World War that brought rapid change. Operation Paperclip brought German scientists to the United States beginning in 1945 and they helped usher in the Space Age. The advent of human space flight began in earnest in 1958 and it eventually led to humans on the Moon, orbiting space stations, reusable spacecraft and commercial companies that ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. Over the past seven decades, we have evolved our space program from one of governmental priorities and investment to one of a burgeoning commercial program that now sends tourist above the Kármán line and into space.