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151-525: Spaceflight began in the 20th century following theoretical and practical breakthroughs by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky , Robert H. Goddard , and Hermann Oberth , each of whom published works proposing rockets as the means for spaceflight. The first successful large-scale rocket programs were initiated in Nazi Germany by Wernher von Braun . The Soviet Union took the lead in the post-war Space Race , launching

302-435: A Fairey Firefly Mk I, Z1844 , on the deck of HMS  Pretoria Castle on 9 September 1943, when the arrestor hook indicator light falsely showed the hook was in the "down" position, compounded by the batsman failing to notice that the hook was not down. The fighter hit the crash barrier, sheared off its undercarriage and shredded the propeller, but he was unhurt. While at Farnborough as chief naval test pilot, Brown

453-421: A spaceport (cosmodrome), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft. Spaceports are situated well away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities. A launch is often restricted to certain launch windows . These windows depend upon

604-492: A sub-orbital spaceflight the spacecraft reaches space and then returns to the atmosphere after following a (primarily) ballistic trajectory. This is usually because of insufficient specific orbital energy , in which case a suborbital flight will last only a few minutes, but it is also possible for an object with enough energy for an orbit to have a trajectory that intersects the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes after many hours. Pioneer 1

755-469: A tricycle undercarriage , a jet aircraft , and a rotary-wing aircraft. Brown flew almost every category of Royal Navy and Royal Air Force aircraft: glider, fighter, bomber, airliner, amphibian, flying boat and helicopter . During the Second World War , he flew many types of captured German, Italian, and Japanese aircraft, including new jet and rocket aircraft. He was a pioneer of jet technology into

906-508: A "time buffer" and substantially widened the allowable launch windows . The parking orbit gave the crew and controllers time to thoroughly check out the spacecraft after the stresses of launch before committing it for a long journey to the Moon. Robotic missions do not require an abort capability and require radiation minimalization only for delicate electronics, and because modern launchers routinely meet "instantaneous" launch windows, space probes to

1057-590: A Luftwaffe major general. He there saw the demonstration of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter flown by Hanna Reitsch before a small crowd inside the Deutschlandhalle . During this visit he met and got to know Reitsch, whom he had also briefly met in 1936. In the meantime, Brown had been selected to take part as an exchange student at the Schule Schloss Salem , on the banks of Lake Constance , and it

1208-472: A Mach 0.88 dive from that altitude the aircraft suffered from a high- g pitch oscillation at several hertz (Hz). "The ride was smooth, then suddenly it all went to pieces ... as the plane porpoised wildly my chin hit my chest, jerked hard back, slammed forward again, repeated it over and over, flogged by the awful whipping of the plane ...". Remembering the drill he had often practised, Brown managed to pull back gently on both stick and throttle and

1359-573: A United Kingdom then at war, he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Fleet Air Arm pilot, where he was posted to 802 Naval Air Squadron , initially serving on the first escort carrier , HMS  Audacity , converted and thus named in July 1941. He flew one of the carrier's Grumman Martlets . During his service on board Audacity he shot down two Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft, using head-on attacks to exploit

1510-504: A balloon in addition to a lander, marking a first in spaceflight. The first successful flyby Venus probe was the American Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew past Venus in 1962, coming within 35,000 km. A modified Ranger Moon probe, it established that Venus has practically no intrinsic magnetic field and measured the temperature of the planet's atmosphere to be approximately 500 °C (773 K ; 932 °F ). The US conducted

1661-501: A cannon (possibly to test for potential use in space warfare). Crewed reconnaissance stations were found to be a bad idea since uncrewed satellites could do the job much more cost-effectively. The United States Air Force had planned a crewed reconnaissance station, the Manned Orbital Laboratory , which was cancelled in 1969. The Soviets cancelled Almaz in 1978. In a season of detente , the two competitors declared an end to

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1812-443: A counter measure to United States bomber planes in the 1950s. The Tsiolkovsky-influenced Sergey Korolev became the chief rocket designer, and derivatives of his R-7 Semyorka missiles were used to launch the world's first artificial Earth satellite , Sputnik 1 , on October 4, 1957. The U.S., after the launch of Sputnik and two embarrassing failures of Vanguard rockets , launched Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958. Three years later,

1963-405: A crash in a similar aircraft while diving at speeds approaching the sound barrier had killed Geoffrey de Havilland, Jr. , Brown initially started his tests from a height of 35,000 ft, rising to 45,000 ft and during a dive from the latter he achieved a Mach number of 0.985. It was only when attempting the tests from the same height as de Havilland, 4,000 ft, that he discovered that in

2114-486: A dog named Laika . Sputnik 3 was launched on May 15, 1958, and carried a large array of instruments for geophysical research and provided data on pressure and composition of the upper atmosphere, concentration of charged particles, photons in cosmic rays, heavy nuclei in cosmic rays, magnetic and electrostatic fields, and meteoric particles. After a series of failures with the program, the US succeeded with Explorer 1 , which became

2265-416: A flight that normally lasts over twenty hours , could be traversed in less than one hour. While no company offers this type of transportation today, SpaceX has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using Starship . Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit. If rockets are used,

2416-497: A high potassium content. The acoustic detector returned the sounds of the spacecraft operations and the background wind, estimated to be a speed of around 0.5 m/sec wind. Venera 14 followed suite in an identical mission profile. In total 10 Venera probes achieved a soft landing on the surface of Venus. In 1984, the Vega programme began and ended with the launch of two crafts launched 6 days apart, Vega 1 and Vega 2 . Both crafts deployed

2567-660: A joint crewed Moon landing , but after the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963 and Khrushchev's removal from office in October 1964, the competition between the two nations' crewed space programs heated up, and talk of cooperation became less common, due to tense relations and military implications. Only later the United States and the Soviet Union slowly started to exchange more information and engage in joint programs, particularly in

2718-447: A launch tower and flame trench. It is surrounded by equipment used to erect, fuel, and maintain launch vehicles. Before launch, the rocket can weigh hundreds of tons. The Space Shuttle Columbia , on STS-1 , weighed 2030 metric tons (4,480,000 lb) at takeoff. The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Kármán line , which is 100 kilometers (62 mi) above

2869-585: A liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. During World War II , the first guided rocket, the V-2 , was developed and employed as a weapon by Nazi Germany . During a test flight in June 1944, one such rocket reached space at an altitude of 189 kilometers (102 nautical miles), becoming the first human-made object to reach space. At the end of World War II, most of the V-2 rocket team, including its head, Wernher von Braun , surrendered to

3020-611: A pre-programmed list of operations that will be executed unless otherwise instructed. A robotic spacecraft for scientific measurements is often called a space probe or space observatory . Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and risk factors. In addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn , Uranus , and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are

3171-469: A private space industry, with SpaceX being the most successful so far. Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. Its goal was to put a person into Earth orbit and return them safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962, aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6. Project Gemini

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3322-515: A prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The second woman to fly to space was aviator Svetlana Savitskaya , aboard Soyuz T-7 on August 18, 1982. Khrushchev pressured Korolyov to quickly produce greater space achievements in competition with the announced Gemini and Apollo plans. Rather than allowing him to develop his plans for a crewed Soyuz spacecraft , he was forced to make modifications to squeeze two or three men into

3473-621: A result of Doolittle's request, early in 1944 the P-38H Lightning, a Packard Merlin -powered P-51B Mustang and P-47C Thunderbolt were dived for compressibility testing at the RAE by Brown and several other pilots. The results of the tests were that the tactical Mach numbers, i.e., the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the Lightning and Mach 0.71 for the Thunderbolt; the corresponding figure for both

3624-579: A sample. Venera 13 also took an audio sample of the Venusian environment, marking another first. Venera 13 returned the first color images of the surface of Venus, revealing an orange-brown flat bedrock surface covered with loose regolith and small flat thin angular rocks. The composition of the sample determined by the X-ray fluorescence spectrometer put it in the class of weakly differentiated melanocratic alkaline gabbroids, similar to terrestrial leucitic basalt with

3775-498: A single orbit of the Earth. On August 7, 1961, Gherman Titov , another Soviet cosmonaut, became the second man in orbit during his Vostok 2 mission. Titov orbited Earth 17 times in over 25 hours during his spaceflight. By June 16, 1963, the USSR launched a total of six Vostok cosmonauts, two pairs of them flying concurrently, and accumulating a total of 260 cosmonaut-orbits and just over sixteen cosmonaut-days in space. On May 5, 1961,

3926-519: A specially converted Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor that had been captured and was being used by the RAE Flight based at the former Luftwaffe airfield at Schleswig . He was also able to renew acquaintance with German pilot Hanna Reitsch . She had been arrested after the German surrender in 1945. Fearing the approaching Russians, her father had killed her mother, sister and then himself. As an RAE test pilot he

4077-562: A third country achieving orbital spaceflight . The very beginning of the space age , the launch of Sputnik was in the context of international exchange, the International Geophysical Year 1957. Also soon into the space age the international community came together starting to negotiate dedicated international law governing outer space activity . In the 1970s the Soviet Union started to invite other countries to fly their people into space through its Intercosmos program and

4228-453: A three-year development programme culminating in the launch of test pilot Eric Brown on a sub-orbital mission in 1949. The decision by the Ministry of Supply under Attlee 's government to concentrate on research into nuclear power generation and sub-sonic passenger jet aircraft over supersonic atmospheric flight and spaceflight delayed the introduction of both of the latter, although only by

4379-552: A throwback to his days testing aircraft in high speed dives, while at the RAE, Brown performed similar testing of the Avro Tudor airliner. The requirement was to determine the safe limiting speed for the aircraft and to gather data on high-speed handling of large civil aircraft in preparation for a projected four-jet version of the Tudor. Flying from 32,000 ft, in a succession of dives to speeds initially to Mach 0.6, he succeeded in diving

4530-463: A trip to Farnborough was arranged and Brown had a short flight as a passenger in one. A few days later, Brown and Martindale were sent to RAF Speke to collect two new R-4Bs. On arrival, they found the American mechanics assembling the machines, and when Brown asked the master sergeant in charge about himself and Martindale being taught to fly them , he was handed a "large orange-coloured booklet" with

4681-483: A year in the case of supersonic flight, as the data from the Miles M.52 was handed to Bell Aircraft . In 1947, the US sent the first animals in space , fruit flies , although not into orbit, through a V-2 rocket launched from White Sands Missile Range , New Mexico . On June 14, 1949, the US launched the first mammal into space, a rhesus macaque monkey named Albert II , on a sub-orbital flight, though Albert II died when

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4832-491: Is done by a set of orbital maneuvers called space rendezvous . After rendezvousing with the space station, the space vehicle then docks or berths with the station. Docking refers to joining of two separate free-flying space vehicles, while berthing refers to mating operations where an inactive vehicle is placed into the mating interface of another space vehicle by using a robotic arm . Vehicles in orbit have large amounts of kinetic energy. This energy must be discarded if

4983-887: Is effective mainly because of its ability to sustain thrust even as the atmosphere thins. Many ways to reach space other than rocket engines have been proposed. Ideas such as the space elevator , and momentum exchange tethers like rotovators or skyhooks require new materials much stronger than any currently known. Electromagnetic launchers such as launch loops might be feasible with current technology. Other ideas include rocket-assisted aircraft/spaceplanes such as Reaction Engines Skylon (currently in early stage development), scramjet powered spaceplanes, and RBCC powered spaceplanes. Gun launch has been proposed for cargo. On some missions beyond LEO (Low Earth Orbit) , spacecraft are inserted into parking orbits, or lower intermediary orbits. The parking orbit approach greatly simplified Apollo mission planning in several important ways. It acted as

5134-586: Is impossible. To date several academics have studied intergalactic travel in a serious manner. Spacecraft are vehicles designed to operate in space. The first 'true spacecraft' is sometimes said to be Apollo Lunar Module , since this was the only crewed vehicle to have been designed for, and operated only in space; and is notable for its non-aerodynamic shape. Spacecraft today predominantly use rockets for propulsion , but other propulsion techniques such as ion drives are becoming more common, particularly for uncrewed vehicles, and this can significantly reduce

5285-541: Is known as Kessler syndrome . There are several terms that refer to a flight into or through outer space . A space mission refers to a spaceflight intended to achieve an objective. Objectives for space missions may include space exploration , space research , and national firsts in spaceflight. Space transport is the use of spacecraft to transport people or cargo into or through outer space. This may include human spaceflight and cargo spacecraft flight. The first theoretical proposal of space travel using rockets

5436-647: Is more fuel-efficient for a craft to burn its fuel as close as possible to its periapsis (lowest point); see Oberth effect . Astrodynamics is the study of spacecraft trajectories, particularly as they relate to gravitational and propulsion effects. Astrodynamics allows for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination at the correct time without excessive propellant use. An orbital maneuvering system may be needed to maintain or change orbits. Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails , magnetic sails , plasma-bubble magnetic systems , and using gravitational slingshot effects. The term "transfer energy" means

5587-451: Is not generally recognized by the public that the increase in potential energy required to pass the Kármán line is only about 3% of the orbital energy (potential plus kinetic energy) required by the lowest possible Earth orbit (a circular orbit just above the Kármán line.) In other words, it is far easier to reach space than to stay there. On May 17, 2004, Civilian Space eXploration Team launched

5738-641: Is the fifth spacecraft put on an escape trajectory leaving the Solar System . Voyager 1 , Voyager 2 , Pioneer 10 , Pioneer 11 are the earlier ones. The one farthest from the Sun is Voyager 1 , which is more than 100 AU distant and is moving at 3.6 AU per year. In comparison, Proxima Centauri , the closest star other than the Sun, is 267,000 AU distant. It will take Voyager 1 over 74,000 years to reach this distance. Vehicle designs using other techniques, such as nuclear pulse propulsion are likely to be able to reach

5889-669: The Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 . Some have called it a New Space Race period, particularly in light of China's speedy advances and other Asian countries competing in advancing their spaceflight achievements, creating an Asian Space Race . Though international cooperation and international private spaceflight remains an integral part of the sector, but competitively diversifying commercial international contracting, such as international private human spaceflight of e.g. Axiom Space in cooperation with different countries and heavily relying on

6040-641: The German Navy had owned since the 1930s. Brown led the re-emergence of naval aviation in Germany to the point that in 1960 Marineflieger squadrons were integrated into NATO . Later Brown enjoyed a three-month period as a test pilot for the Focke-Wulf company, helping them out until they could find a replacement after the company's previous test pilot had been detained due to having relatives in East Germany . In

6191-578: The International Space Station . Which also continued operation despite international confrontations like the Russian invasion of Ukraine , while private spaceflight, with Space-X 's Starlink , became a significant element in the war and international politics. Meanwhile, a range of new lunar spaceflight programs are being advanced especially as international programs, from the Artemis program and

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6342-518: The National Museum of Flight near Edinburgh. His flight test of this rocket plane, the only one by an Allied pilot using the rocket motor, was accomplished unofficially: it was deemed to be almost suicidal due to the notoriously dangerous hypergolic C-Stoff fuel and T-Stoff oxidizer combination. Commenting to a newspaper in September 2015 he recalled, To me it was the most exciting thing on

6493-619: The Royal High School in Edinburgh and entered the University of Edinburgh , studying modern languages with an emphasis on German. While there, he joined the university's air unit and received his first formal flying instruction. In February 1938, he returned to Germany under the sponsorship of the Foreign Office, having been invited to attend the 1938 Automobile Exhibition by Udet, by then

6644-687: The Royal Naval Air Station (from 1972 back with the RAF ), Lossiemouth , until March 1970. He was appointed a naval aide de camp to Queen Elizabeth II on 7 July 1969 and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 New Year Honours . He relinquished his appointment as naval ADC on 27 January 1970 and retired from the Royal Navy later in 1970. Brown flew aircraft from Britain,

6795-478: The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation , can be used to find the total Δ v {\displaystyle \Delta v} , or potential change in velocity. This formula, which is still used by engineers, is a key concept of spaceflight. Spaceflight became a practical possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard 's publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes . His application of

6946-457: The USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles. As of 2020, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are Soyuz , Shenzhou , and Crew Dragon . The U.S. Space Shuttle fleet operated from April 1981 until July 2011. SpaceShipOne has conducted three human suborbital space flights. On

7097-506: The Vostok capsule , calling the result Voskhod . Only two of these were launched. Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft with a crew of three, who could not wear space suits because of size and weight constrictions. Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk when he left the Voskhod 2 on March 8, 1965. He was almost lost in space when he had extreme difficulty fitting his inflated space suit back into

7248-467: The blind spot in their defensive armament. Audacity was torpedoed and sunk on 21 December 1941 by the German submarine  U-751 , commanded by Gerhard Bigalk . The first rescue ship left because of warnings of a nearby U-boat , and Brown was left in the sea overnight with a dwindling band of survivors, until he was rescued the next day. He was the one of the two out of 24 to survive hypothermia ;

7399-458: The de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets gave sufficient power for interplanetary travel to become possible. This paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth and Wernher Von Braun , later key players in spaceflight. In 1929, the Slovene officer Hermann Noordung was the first to imagine a complete space station in his book The Problem of Space Travel . The first rocket to reach space

7550-452: The de Laval nozzle to liquid-fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for interplanetary travel to become possible. After further research, Goddard attempted to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War but his plans were foiled by the November 11, 1918 armistice with Germany . After choosing to work with private financial support, he was the first to launch

7701-623: The first satellite , the first animal , the first human and the first woman into orbit . The United States landed the first men on the Moon in 1969. Through the late 20th century, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China were also working on projects to reach space. Following the end of the Space Race, spaceflight has been characterized by greater international cooperation, cheaper access to low Earth orbit and an expansion of commercial ventures. Interplanetary probes have visited all of

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7852-405: The flexible deck concept with HMS Pretoria Castle , in which he was supposed to make landing approaches to the escort carrier in a Bell Airacobra , which had been modified with a tail hook. During one of these passes, Brown declared an emergency and was given permission to make a deck landing; a ruse which had previously been agreed with the carrier's captain, Caspar John . Although the landing

8003-534: The jet engine to make it more suitable for naval use. This resulted in the Gloster Meteor being selected as the Royal Navy 's first jet fighter, although, as it turned out, few would be used by them. Brown was also selected as the pilot for the Miles M.52 supersonic research aircraft programme, and he flew modified aircraft incorporating components intended for the M.52; however, the post-war government cancelled

8154-515: The 1960s, due to his considerable experience of carrier aviation, Brown, while working at the Admiralty as deputy director of Naval Air Warfare, was consulted on the flight deck arrangement of the planned new UK class of aircraft carrier, the CVA-01 ; the project was cancelled in 1966. In September 1967 came his last appointment in the Royal Navy when, as a captain , he took command of HMS Fulmar , then

8305-485: The 2010s and particularly by the early 2020s. Starting in the 2010s the diversified spaceflight sector had become by the 2020s increasingly competitive with returning inter-national competition and cooperation barrieres, like a cooperation ban enacted in the United States on China in 2011 and later the European Space Agency banning Russia, and increased private competition in spaceflight capabilities, enabled by

8456-545: The Americans (although no information was ever received in return), allowed Bell to modify its XS-1 for true transsonic pitch controllability, in turn allowing Chuck Yeager to become the first man to exceed Mach 1 in 1947. If the Ministry of Supply had proceeded with Ralph Smith's V2-based Megaroc sub-orbital manned spacecraft, Brown would also have been the leading candidate for its projected 1949 first crewed spaceflight. In

8607-527: The China-Russian plans to establish a lunar base , to the European Space Agency pened Moon Village . This competitive but international commercial development of the spaceflight sector has been called New Space . Until the 21st century, space programs of the United States were exclusively operated by government agencies. In the 21st century, several aerospace companies began efforts at developing

8758-403: The Earth's surface. (The United States defines outer space as everything beyond 50 miles (80 km) in altitude.) Rocket engines remain the only currently practical means of reaching space, with planes and high-altitude balloons failing due to lack of atmosphere and alternatives such as space elevators not yet being built. Chemical propulsion, or the acceleration of gases at high velocities,

8909-677: The Fw 190 and Messerschmitt Bf 109 was Mach 0.75, giving them the advantage in a dive. However the tests flown by Brown and his colleagues also gave a Mach number for the Mustang of 0.78, resulting in Doolittle being able to argue with his superiors for the Mustang to be chosen in preference to the P-38 and P-47 for all escort duties from then on, which was available in growing numbers by very early 1944; for Doolittle's eventual move to air supremacy missions permitting

9060-679: The Gemini program ended just before the Apollo 1 tragedy. Following multiple uncrewed test flights of the Saturn 1B and the Saturn V , the U.S. launched the crewed Apollo 7 mission into low earth orbit . Shortly after its successful completion, the U.S. launched Apollo 8 (first mission to orbit the moon), Apollo 9 (first Apollo mission to launch with both the CSM and the LEM ) and Apollo 10 (first mission to nearly land on

9211-575: The German forces having retreated there. He expected to arrive at a liberated aerodrome, just after it had been taken by the British Army ; however, German resistance to the Allied advance meant that the ground forces had been delayed and the airfield was still an operational Luftwaffe base. Luckily for Brown, the commanding officer of the Luftwaffe airfield at Grove offered his surrender and Brown took charge of

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9362-779: The German jet designs to see front-line action in the war: the Messerschmitt Me 262 A Schwalbe and the Arado Ar 234B Blitz , both these types powered by twin Junkers Jumo 004 engines, and the single-engined BMW 003 -powered Heinkel He 162 A Spatz turbojet combat aircraft. He would later fly the He 162A at the Farnborough Air Show , and described it as having the best controls of any aircraft he had ever flown but as being difficult to handle. One of his colleagues at Farnborough died testing

9513-455: The GoFast rocket on a suborbital flight, the first amateur spaceflight. On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was used for the first privately funded human spaceflight . Point-to-point, or Earth to Earth transportation, is a category of sub-orbital spaceflight in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations. A conventional airline route between London and Sydney ,

9664-586: The Luftwaffe. During this period Brown worked closely with Admiral Gerhard Wagner of the German Naval Staff. Training was conducted initially in the UK on Hawker Sea Hawks and Fairey Gannets , and during this time Brown was allocated a personal Percival Pembroke aircraft by the Marineflieger , which, to his surprise, the German maintenance personnel took great pride in. It was the first exclusively naval aircraft

9815-516: The Medical Officer of the British Second Army occupying the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , to help interrogate the former camp commandant and his assistant. Agreeing to do so, he soon interviewed Josef Kramer and Irma Grese , and remarked upon the experience by saying that; "Two more loathsome creatures it is hard to imagine" and further describing the latter as "... the worst human being I have ever met." Kramer and Grese were later tried and hanged for war crimes. After

9966-408: The Moon and developed continuous crewed human presence in space with a series of space stations , ranging from the Salyut program to the International Space Station . Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds. A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from

10117-423: The Moon and other planets generally use direct injection to maximize performance by limiting the boil off of cryogenic propellants . Although some might coast briefly during the launch sequence, they do not complete one or more full parking orbits before the burn that injects them onto an Earth escape trajectory. The escape velocity from a celestial body decreases as the distance from the body increases. However, it

10268-426: The RAE was approached by USAAF General Jimmy Doolittle with a request for help, as the 8th Air Force had been having trouble when their Lockheed P-38 Lightning , Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and North American P-51 Mustang fighters, providing top cover for the bombers, dived down onto attacking German fighters, some of the diving U.S. fighters encountering speed regions where they became difficult to control . As

10419-499: The RAE with the recommendation that he be employed in the Aerodynamics Flight department at Farnborough. During the first month in the Flight, Brown flew 13 aircraft types, including a captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190 . Brown was posted to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough , where his experience in deck landings was sought. While there he initially performed testing of the newly navalised Sea Hurricane and Seafire . His aptitude for deck landings led to his posting for

10570-628: The Royal Aeronautical Establishment (RAE) this time to perform experimental flying, including batting in the much more experienced Admiralty Test Pilot Lieutenant Commander Roy Sydney Baker-Falkner flying the experimental Fairey Barracuda onto the deck of a carrier in the Clyde. Almost immediately he was transferred to Southern Italy to evaluate captured Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe aircraft. This Brown did with almost no tuition, information having to be gleaned from whatever documents were available. On completion of these duties, his commander, being impressed with his performance, sent him back to

10721-429: The Royal Navy carrier HMS  Ocean on 3 December 1945. For this work with the Mosquito and the Vampire he was later appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire . In the 1950s during the Korean War , Brown was seconded as an exchange officer for two years to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland , US where he flew a number of American aircraft, including 36 types of helicopter. In January 1952, it

10872-546: The Second World War‚ Brown commanded the Enemy Aircraft Flight , an elite group of pilots who test-flew captured German and Italian aircraft. That experience rendered Brown one of the few men to have been qualified to compare both Allied and Axis aeroplanes as they flew during the war. He flight-tested 53 German aircraft, including the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket fighter. That Komet is now on display at

11023-596: The Soviet government officially discontinued its crewed lunar program on June 24, 1974, when Valentin Glushko succeeded Korolyov as General Spacecraft Designer. Both nations went on to fly relatively small, non-permanent crewed space laboratories Salyut and Skylab , using their Soyuz and Apollo craft as shuttles. The US launched only one Skylab, but the USSR launched a total of seven "Salyuts", three of which were secretly Almaz military crewed reconnaissance stations, which carried

11174-496: The Tudor up to Mach 0.7, an unusual figure for such a large piston-engined aeroplane, this figure being dictated by the pilot's discretion, as pulling the aircraft out of the dive had required the combined efforts of Brown and his second pilot. The Tudor was not a success. The planned jet version of the Tudor later became the Avro Ashton . In 1949, he test flew a modified (strengthened and control-boosted) de Havilland DH.108 , after

11325-473: The US announced a planned launch of the Vanguard by the spring of 1958, and on July 31, the USSR announced it would launch a satellite in the fall of 1957. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite of Earth in the history of humankind. On November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the second satellite, Sputnik 2 , and the first to carry a living animal into orbit,

11476-490: The US launched its first suborbital Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard , in the Freedom 7 capsule. The first woman in space was former civilian parachutist Valentina Tereshkova , who entered orbit on June 16, 1963, aboard the Soviet mission Vostok 6 . The chief Soviet spacecraft designer, Sergey Korolyov , conceived of the idea to recruit a female cosmonaut corps and launch two women concurrently on Vostok 5/6. However, his plan

11627-506: The USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin 's flight, on 12 April 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which flown in the atmosphere and five of which flown in space. The Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California . The first Space Shuttle to fly into space

11778-482: The USSR launched Vostok 1, carrying cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit. The US responded with the suborbital launch of Alan Shepard on May 5, 1961, and the orbital launch of John Glenn on February 20, 1962. These events were followed by a pledge from U.S. President John F. Kennedy to go to the moon and the creation of the Gemini and Apollo programs. After successfully performing a rendezvous and docking and an EVA ,

11929-562: The United States started to include women and people of colour in its astronaut program. First exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union was formalized in the 1962 Dryden-Blagonravov agreement , calling for cooperation on the exchange of data from weather satellites, a study of the Earth's magnetic field , and joint tracking of the NASA Echo II balloon satellite . In 1963 President Kennedy could even interest premier Khrushchev in

12080-642: The United States, Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Japan and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as holding the record for flying the greatest number of different aircraft. The official record is 487, but includes only basic types. For example, Brown flew 14 versions of the Spitfire and Seafire and although these versions are very different they appear only once in the list. This list includes only aircraft flown by Brown as "Captain in Command". Because of

12231-569: The United States, and were expatriated to work on American missiles at what became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency , producing missiles such as Juno I and Atlas . The Soviet Union , in turn, captured several V2 production facilities and built several replicas, with 5 of their 11 rockets successfully reaching their targets. (This was relatively consistent with Nazi Germany's success rate.) The Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear weapons as

12382-476: The Worlds ). The first realistic proposal for spaceflight was "Issledovanie Mirovikh Prostranstv Reaktivnimi Priborami" , or "The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, published in 1903. Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper " A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes ", where his application of

12533-532: The aircraft sinking in the Solent off Cowes , Isle of Wight . He was pulled unconscious from the cockpit of the wrecked aircraft by the Saunders-Roe test pilot Geoffrey Tyson , having been knocked out in the crash. He was promoted lieutenant commander on 1 April 1951, commander on 31 December 1953 and captain on 31 December 1960. Brown was responsible for at least three important firsts in carrier aviation:

12684-512: The aircraft type. Fluent in German, Brown helped interview many Germans after the Second World War, including Wernher von Braun and Hermann Göring , Willy Messerschmitt , Ernst Heinkel and Kurt Tank . He described the interviews as being minimal, due to the need to begin the Nuremberg trials , and limited to matters related to aviation. Brown was using Himmler's personal aircraft,

12835-471: The aircraft's stall speed was 110 knots (200 km/h; 130 mph). He also flew several stints with Fighter Command in the air defence of Great Britain. During this time, in mid-1944, Brown's home was destroyed by a V-1 "Doodlebug" cruise missile, concussing his wife and causing serious injury to their cleaner. At this time, the RAE was the leading authority on high-speed flight and Brown became involved in this sort of testing, flights being flown where

12986-468: The aircraft, leaving Brown and his colleagues no idea of the expected engine hours remaining to the machines. Because of the scarcity of the special high-temperature alloys for use in their construction, the Junkers Jumo 004 engines had a life of only 25 hours – it was thus not known whether the engines were brand new or just about to expire. During this period, Brown was asked by Brigadier Glyn Hughes ,

13137-602: The aircraft, usually a Supermarine Spitfire , would be dived at speeds of the high subsonic and near transonic region. Figures achieved by Brown and his colleagues during these tests reached Mach 0.86 for a standard Spitfire MK IX, to Mach 0.92 for a modified Spitfire PR Mk XI flown by his colleague, Squadron Leader Anthony F. Martindale. Together with Brown and Martindale, the RAE Aerodynamics Flight also included two other test pilots, Sqn Ldr James "Jimmy" Nelson and Sqn Ldr Douglas Weightman. During this same period

13288-578: The airfield and its staff of 2,000 men until Allied forces arrived the next day. Subsequently, Brown and Martindale, along with several other members of the Aerodynamics Flight and assisted by a co-operative German pilot, later ferried twelve Ar 234s across the North Sea and on to Farnborough. The venture was not without risk, as before their capture, the Germans had destroyed all the engine log books for

13439-487: The appointed airfield at Halle , he was soon flying in a two-seat Bücker Jungmann . He recalled the incident nearly 80 years later on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs , You talk about aerobatics – we did every one I think and I was hanging on to my tummy. So, when we landed, and he gave me the fright of my life because we approached upside-down and then he rolled out just in time to land, he said to me as I got out of

13590-587: The cabin through an airlock , and a landing error forced him and Voskhod 2 crewmate Pavel Belyayev to be lost in dense woods for hours before being found by the recovery crew and rescued days later. The start of crewed Gemini missions was delayed a year later than NASA had planned, but ten largely successful missions were launched in 1965 and 1966, allowing the US to overtake the Soviet lead by achieving space rendezvous ( Gemini 6A ) and docking ( Gemini 8 ) of two vehicles, long duration flights of eight days ( Gemini 5 ) and fourteen days ( Gemini 7 ), and demonstrating

13741-592: The case of uncrewed spacecraft in high-energy orbits, to boost themselves into graveyard orbits . Used upper stages or failed spacecraft, however, often lack the ability to deorbit themselves. This becomes a major issue when large numbers of uncontrollable spacecraft exist in frequently used orbits, increasing the risk of debris colliding with functional satellites. This problem is exacerbated when large objects, often upper stages, break up in orbit or collide with other objects, creating often hundreds of small, hard to find pieces of debris. This problem of continuous collisions

13892-473: The cockpit, slapped me between the shoulder-blades, and gave me the old WW1 fighter pilots' greeting, Hals- und Beinbruch , which means broken neck and broken legs but that was their greeting. But he said to me, you'll make a fine fighter pilot – do me two favours: learn to speak German fluently and learn to fly. During the Olympics, Brown witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens . In 1937, Brown left

14043-492: The concept. Whether due to Brown or not, the first US aircraft carrier modified with the new flight deck, USS  Antietam , was ready less than nine months later. In 1954, Brown, by then a Commander in the Royal Navy, became Commander (Air) of RNAS Brawdy , where he remained until returning to West Germany in late 1957, becoming Chief of British Naval Mission to Germany, his brief being to re-establish German naval aviation after its pre-war integration with and subornation to,

14194-482: The existence of the Luftwaffe , and Brown and his father met and were invited to join social gatherings by members of the newly disclosed organisation. At one of these meetings, Ernst Udet , a former First World War fighter ace, was fascinated to make the acquaintance of Brown senior, a former RFC pilot, and offered to take his son Eric up flying with him. Eric eagerly accepted the German's offer and after his arrival at

14345-566: The fighters to fly up to 75–100 miles ahead of the bomber combat box formations, instead of requiring them to remain with the bombers at all times. Brown had been made aware of the British progress in jet propulsion in May 1941 when he had heard of the Gloster E.28/39 after diverting in bad weather to RAF Cranwell during a flight and had subsequently met Frank Whittle when asked to suggest improvements to

14496-662: The first US satellite in space, on February 1, 1958. This carried scientific instrumentation and detected the theorized Van Allen radiation belt . The US public shock over Sputnik 1 became known as the Sputnik crisis . On July 29, 1958, the US Congress passed legislation turning the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with responsibility for

14647-517: The first carrier landing using an aircraft equipped with a tricycle undercarriage (the Bell Airacobra Mk 1 AH574 ) on the trials carrier HMS Pretoria Castle on 4 April 1945; the first landing of a twin-engined aircraft on a carrier (the Mosquito) on HMS Indefatigable on 25 March 1944; and the world's first carrier landing of a jet aircraft, landing the prototype de Havilland Vampire LZ551/G on

14798-416: The first commercial operator to successfully launch a crewed mission to the International Space Station with Crew Dragon Demo-2 . At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, inspired by fiction by writers such as Jules Verne ( From the Earth to the Moon , Around the Moon ) and H.G. Wells ( The First Men in the Moon , The War of

14949-501: The first crewed spaceflight to leave Earth orbit and orbit the Moon on December 21, 1968, with the Apollo 8 space mission. Later they succeeded in achieving President Kennedy's goal on July 20, 1969, with the landing of Apollo 11 . Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the Moon. Six such successful landings were achieved through 1972, with one failure on Apollo 13 . The N1 rocket suffered four catastrophic uncrewed launch failures between 1969 and 1972, and

15100-474: The first men to set foot on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. The Skylab program's goal was to create the first space station of NASA. The program marked the last launch of the Saturn V rocket on May 14, 1973. Many experiments were performed on board, including unprecedented solar studies. The longest crewed mission of the program was Skylab 4 which lasted 84 days, from November 16, 1973, to February 8, 1974. The total mission duration

15251-432: The horizon, a totally new experience. I remember watching the ground crew very carefully before take-off, wondering if they thought they were waving goodbye to me forever or whether they thought this thing was going to return. The noise it made was absolutely thunderous and it was like being in charge of a runaway train; everything changed so rapidly and I really had to have my wits about me. Brown flight-tested all three of

15402-415: The intensity of the competition caught up to them in early 1967, when they suffered their first crew fatalities. On January 27, the entire crew of Apollo 1 , "Gus" Grissom , Ed White , and Roger Chaffee , were killed by suffocation in a fire that swept through their cabin during a ground test approximately one month before their planned launch. On April 24, the single pilot of Soyuz 1 , Vladimir Komarov ,

15553-414: The light level as being suitable for surface photography. In 1975, Venera 9 established an orbit around Venus and successfully returned the first photography of the surface of Venus. Venera 10 landed on Venus and followed with further photography shortly after. In 1981, Venera 13 performed a successful soft-landing on Venus and marked the first probe to drill into the surface of another planet and take

15704-603: The light of the development of safety standards since 1970, producing the co-developed APAS-75 and later docking standards . Most notably this signaled the ending of the first era of the space age, the Space Race , through the Apollo-Soyuz mission which became the basis for the Shuttle-Mir program and eventually the International Space Station programme . Such international cooperation, and international spaceflight organization

15855-428: The loss of Audacity , Brown resumed operational flying, being seconded to Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons flying escort operations to USAAF Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers over France. His job was to train them in deck-landing techniques, though the training took place on airfields. As a form of quid pro quo he joined them on fighter operations. Operational once again in 1943, he went back to

16006-409: The moon). These events culminated with the first crewed moon landing, Apollo 11 , and six subsequent missions, five of which successfully landed on the moon. Spaceflight has been widely employed by numerous government and commercial entities for placing satellites into orbit around Earth for a broad range of purposes. Certain government agencies have also sent uncrewed spacecraft exploring space beyond

16157-585: The motion; "... ceased as quickly as it had started". He believed that he survived the test flight partly because he was a shorter man, de Havilland having suffered a broken neck possibly due to the violent oscillation. Test instrumentation on Brown's flight recorded during the oscillations accelerations of +4 and −3g's at 3 Hz. Brown described the DH 108 as; "A killer. Nasty stall . Vicious undamped longitudinal oscillation at speed in bumps". All three DH 108 aircraft were lost in fatal accidents. In 1948, Brown

16308-577: The nation's civilian space programs. In 1959, NASA began Project Mercury to launch single-man capsules into Earth orbit and chose a corps of seven astronauts introduced as the Mercury Seven . On April 12, 1961, the USSR opened the era of crewed spaceflight, with the flight of the first cosmonaut (Russian name for space travelers), Yuri Gagarin . Gagarin's flight, part of the Soviet Vostok space exploration program, took 108 minutes and consisted of

16459-406: The nearest star significantly faster. Another possibility that could allow for human interstellar spaceflight is to make use of time dilation , as this would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. However, attaining such high speeds would still require

16610-402: The new steam catapult was capable of launching an aircraft without any wind, they would risk their pilot (Brown) if the Americans would risk their aircraft. The launch was a success and US carriers would later feature the steam catapult. It was around the same time that another British invention was being offered to the US, the angled flight deck , and Brown once again was called upon to promote

16761-402: The only way to explore them. Telerobotics also allows exploration of regions that are vulnerable to contamination by Earth micro-organisms since spacecraft can be sterilized. Humans can not be sterilized in the same way as a spaceship, as they coexist with numerous micro-organisms, and these micro-organisms are also hard to contain within a spaceship or spacesuit. The first uncrewed space mission

16912-503: The parachute failed. On July 22, 1951, the Soviets launched the Soviet space dogs , Dezik and Tsygan , who were the first dogs in space and the first to safely return. The race began in 1957 when both the US and the USSR made statements announced they planned to launch artificial satellites during the 18-month long International Geophysical Year of July 1957 to December 1958. On July 29, 1957,

17063-444: The planets in the Solar System , and humans have remained in orbit for long periods aboard space stations such as Mir and the ISS . Most recently, China has emerged as the third nation with the capability to launch independent crewed missions, while operators in the commercial sector have developed reusable booster systems and craft launched from airborne platforms.In 2020, SpaceX became

17214-399: The position of celestial bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth. Once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit. A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of

17365-760: The postwar era. Brown was born in Hackney , in the East End of London, but was put up for adoption. At this time there were few places for adoption in London but more in Scotland and he was adopted by Euphemia and Robert Brown in Edinburgh. Robert was a former balloon observer and pilot in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Brown's adoptive father later took him to see the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Hermann Göring had recently announced

17516-447: The probe failed before it could complete its mission. Venera 3 , which also lost contact, marked the first time a man-made object made contact with another planet after it impacted Venus on March 1, 1966. Venera 4 , Venera 5 , and Venera 6 performed successful atmospheric entry. In 1970 Venera 7 marked the first time a spacecraft was able to return data after landing on another planet. In 1972, Venera 8 landed on Venus and measured

17667-401: The project in 1945 with the M.52 almost complete. On 2 May 1944, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire "for outstanding enterprise and skill in piloting aircraft during hazardous aircraft trials." In February 1945, Brown learned that the Aerodynamics Flight had been allocated three Sikorsky R-4B Hoverfly/Gadfly helicopters. He had never seen one of these machines, so

17818-483: The race and literally shook hands on July 17, 1975, with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project , where the two craft docked, and the crews exchanged visits. While participation of private actors and other countries beside the Soviet Union and the United States in spaceflight had been the case from the very start of spaceflight development. A first commercial satellite had been launched by 1962, as well as in 1965

17969-457: The remainder heats the atmosphere. The Mercury , Gemini , and Apollo capsules splashed down in the sea. These capsules were designed to land at relatively low speeds with the help of a parachute. Soviet/Russian capsules for Soyuz make use of a big parachute and braking rockets to touch down on land. Spaceplanes like the Space Shuttle land like a glider . After a successful landing,

18120-484: The rest succumbed to the cold. Of the complement of 480, 407 survived. The loss of life was such that 802 Squadron was disbanded until February 1942. On 10 March 1942, Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his service on Audacity , in particular "For bravery and skill in action against Enemy aircraft and in the protection of a Convoy against heavy and sustained Enemy attacks". Following

18271-456: The retort; "Whaddya mean, bud? – Here's your instructor". Brown and Martindale examined the booklet and after several practice attempts at hovering and controlling the craft, followed by a stiff drink, they set off for Farnborough. Brown and Martindale managed the trip safely, if raggedly, in formation, although sometimes as much as a couple of miles apart. On 4 April, Brown added another "first" to his logbook when engaged in trials in relation to

18422-541: The rockets did not achieve the altitude necessary to be regarded as sub-orbital spaceflight , the Backfire report remains the most extensive technical documentation of the rocket, including all support procedures, tailored vehicles and fuel composition. Subsequently, the British Interplanetary Society proposed an enlarged man-carrying version of the V-2 called Megaroc . The plan, written in 1946, envisaged

18573-463: The size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmospheric re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight. A minimal orbital spaceflight requires much higher velocities than a minimal sub-orbital flight, and so it is technologically much more challenging to achieve. To achieve orbital spaceflight,

18724-636: The spacecraft, its occupants, and cargo can be recovered. In some cases, recovery has occurred before landing: while a spacecraft is still descending on its parachute, it can be snagged by a specially designed aircraft. This mid-air retrieval technique was used to recover the film canisters from the Corona spy satellites. Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control , or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous , in which they have

18875-610: The tangential velocity around the Earth is as important as altitude. In order to perform a stable and lasting flight in space, the spacecraft must reach the minimal orbital speed required for a closed orbit . Interplanetary spaceflight is flight between planets within a single planetary system . In practice, the use of the term is confined to travel between the planets of our Solar System . Plans for future crewed interplanetary spaceflight missions often include final vehicle assembly in Earth orbit, such as NASA's Constellation program and Russia's Kliper / Parom tandem. New Horizons

19026-424: The testing of carriers' landing arrangements before they were brought into service. The testing involved multiple combinations of landing point and type of aircraft, with the result being that by the close of 1943 he had performed around 1,500 deck landings on 22 different carriers. In six years at RAE, Brown recalled that he hardly ever took a single day's leave. During carrier compatibility trials, Brown crash-landed

19177-495: The thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propel spacecraft onto suborbital trajectories . If the mission is orbital , the spacecraft usually separates the first stage and ignites the second stage , which propels the spacecraft to high enough speeds that it reaches orbit. Once in orbit, spacecraft are at high enough speeds that they fall around the Earth rather than fall back to the surface. Most spacecraft, and all crewed spacecraft, are designed to deorbit themselves or, in

19328-411: The total amount of energy imparted by a rocket stage to its payload. This can be the energy imparted by a first stage of a launch vehicle to an upper stage plus payload, or by an upper stage or spacecraft kick motor to a spacecraft . In order to reach a space station , a spacecraft would have to arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance (e.g. within visual contact). This

19479-578: The use of extra-vehicular activity to do useful work outside a spacecraft ( Gemini 12 ). The USSR made no crewed flights during this period but continued to develop its Soyuz craft and secretly accepted Kennedy's implicit lunar challenge, designing Soyuz variants for lunar orbit and landing. They also attempted to develop the N1 , a large, crewed Moon-capable launch vehicle similar to the US Saturn V . As both nations rushed to get their new spacecraft flying with men,

19630-460: The use of some new, advanced method of propulsion . Dynamic soaring as a way to travel across interstellar space has been proposed as well. Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction . However, theoretically speaking, there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel

19781-413: The vehicle is to land safely without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Typically this process requires special methods to protect against aerodynamic heating . The theory behind reentry was developed by Harry Julian Allen . Based on this theory, reentry vehicles present blunt shapes to the atmosphere for reentry. Blunt shapes mean that less than 1% of the kinetic energy ends up as heat reaching the vehicle, and

19932-456: The vehicle's mass and increase its delta-v . Launch systems are used to carry a payload from Earth's surface into outer space. Most current spaceflight uses multi-stage expendable launch systems to reach space. The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15 , was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on 19 July 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, the Space Shuttle , was launched by

20083-453: Was Sputnik , launched October 4, 1957 to orbit the Earth. Nearly all satellites , landers and rovers are robotic spacecraft. Not every uncrewed spacecraft is a robotic spacecraft; for example, a reflector ball is a non-robotic uncrewed spacecraft. Space missions where other animals but no humans are on-board are called uncrewed missions. The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of

20234-493: Was NASA 's second human spaceflight program. The program ran from 1961 to 1966. The program pioneered the orbital maneuvers required for space rendezvous . Ed White became the first American to make an extravehicular activity (EVA, or "space walk"), on June 3, 1965, during Gemini 4 . Gemini 6A and 7 accomplished the first space rendezvous on December 15, 1965. Gemini 8 achieved the first space docking with an uncrewed Agena Target Vehicle on March 16, 1966. Gemini 8

20385-434: Was 2249 days, with Skylab finally falling from orbit over Australia on July 11, 1979. Spaceflight Spaceflights include the launches of Earth observation and telecommunications satellites, interplanetary missions , the rendezvouses and dockings with space stations , and crewed spaceflights on scientific or tourist missions. Spaceflight can be achieved conventionally via multistage rockets , which provide

20536-480: Was NASA's first space probe intended to reach the Moon. A partial failure caused it to instead follow a suborbital trajectory to an altitude of 113,854 kilometers (70,746 mi) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere 43 hours after launch. The most generally recognized boundary of space is the Kármán line 100 km (62 mi) above sea level. (NASA alternatively defines an astronaut as someone who has flown more than 80 km (50 mi) above sea level.) It

20687-402: Was a British Royal Navy officer and test pilot who flew 487 types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history. Brown held the world record for the most aircraft carrier deck take-offs and landings performed (2,407 and 2,271 respectively) and achieved several "firsts" in naval aviation , including the first landings on an aircraft carrier of a twin-engined aircraft, an aircraft with

20838-446: Was a German V-2 rocket, on a vertical test flight in June 1944. After the war ended, the research and development branch of the (British) Ordinance Office organised Operation Backfire which, in October 1945, assembled enough V-2 missiles and supporting components to enable the launch of three (possibly four, depending on source consulted) of them from a site near Cuxhaven in northern Germany. Although these launches were inclined and

20989-502: Was achieved without difficulty, the long take off run required for the Airacobra meant that even with the ship steaming at full speed, there was little margin of error. This was the first carrier landing and take off for any aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage. With the end of the European war in sight, the RAE prepared itself to acquire German aeronautical technology and aircraft before it

21140-441: Was also the first US spacecraft to experience in-space critical failure endangering the lives of the crew. The Apollo program was the third human spaceflight program carried out by NASA. The program's goal was to orbit and land crewed vehicles on the Moon. The program ran from 1969 to 1972. Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit and orbit the Moon on December 21, 1968. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became

21291-482: Was awarded the Boyd Trophy for his work in trials for the rubber deck landing system. On 30 March 1949, he was granted a permanent Royal Navy commission as a lieutenant, with seniority backdated to his original wartime promotion to the rank. On 12 August 1949, he was testing the third of three Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 jet-powered flying-boat fighter prototypes, TG271 , when he struck submerged debris, which resulted in

21442-475: Was changed to launch a male first in Vostok 5 , followed shortly afterward by Tereshkova. The then first secretary of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev , spoke to Tereshkova by radio during her flight. On November 3, 1963, Tereshkova married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev , who had previously flown on Vostok 3 . On June 8, 1964, she gave birth to the first child conceived by two space travelers. The couple divorced in 1982, and Tereshkova went on to become

21593-556: Was either accidentally destroyed or taken by the Soviets, and, because of his skills in the language, Brown was made the commanding officer of "Operation Enemy Flight". He flew to northern Germany ; among the targets for the RAE was the Arado Ar 234 , a new jet bomber in which the Allies, particularly the Americans, were very much interested. A number of the jets were based at an airfield in Denmark ,

21744-577: Was furthermore fueled by increasingly more countries achieving spaceflight capabilies and together with a by the 1980s established private spaceflight sector, both being embodied by the European Space Agency . This allowed the formation of an international and commercial post-Space Race spaceflight economy and period, with by the 1990s a public perception of space exploration and space-related technologies as being increasingly commonplace. This increasingly cooperative diversification persisted until competition started to rise in this diversified conditions, from

21895-552: Was involved in the deck landing trials of the de Havilland Sea Mosquito , the heaviest aircraft yet flown from a British carrier. Brown landed one for the first time on HMS  Indefatigable on 25 March 1944. This was the first landing on a carrier by a twin-engined aircraft for the UK, 2 years after the US B-25 Doolittle Raid in April 1942. The fastest speed for deck landing was 86 knots (159 km/h; 99 mph), while

22046-419: Was involved in the wartime Miles M.52 supersonic project, test flying a Spitfire fitted with the M.52's all moving tail , diving from high altitude to achieve high subsonic speeds. He was due to fly the M.52 in 1946, but this fell through when the project was cancelled. The all moving tail information, however, supplied upon instruction from the British government ostensibly as part of an information exchange with

22197-405: Was killed in a crash when his landing parachutes tangled, after a mission cut short by electrical and control system problems. Both accidents were determined to be caused by design defects in the spacecraft, which were corrected before crewed flights resumed. On February 12, 1961, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 1 was the first flyby probe launched to another planet. However communications with

22348-603: Was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch , in an 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space". More well-known is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 's work, " Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами " ( The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices ), published in 1903. In his work, Tsiolkovsky describes the fundamental rocket equation: Δ v = v e ln ⁡ m 0 m f {\displaystyle \Delta v=v_{e}\ln {\frac {m_{0}}{m_{f}}}} Where: This equation, known as

22499-723: Was the Columbia , followed by the Challenger , Discovery , Atlantis , and Endeavour . The Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger , which was lost in January 1986. The Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003. Eric Brown (pilot) Captain Eric Melrose "Winkle" Brown , CBE , DSC , AFC , Hon FRAeS (21 January 1920 – 21 February 2016)

22650-491: Was while at Patuxent River that Brown demonstrated the steam catapult to the Americans, flying a Grumman Panther off the carrier HMS  Perseus while the ship was tied up to the dock at the Philadelphia Naval Yard . It had been planned for Brown to make the first catapult launch with the ship under way and steaming into any wind; however, the wind on the day was so slight that British officials decided that, as

22801-554: Was while there that Brown was woken up with a loud knocking on his door one morning in September 1939. Upon opening the door he was met by a woman with the announcement that " our countries are at war ". Soon afterwards, Brown was arrested by the SS . After three days' incarceration, they escorted Brown in his MG Magnette sports car to the Swiss border, saying they were allowing him to keep the car because they "had no spares for it". On returning to

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