Curated category
1971 in spaceflight
- Stuart RoosaStuart Allen Roosa orbited the Moon 34 times, alone, while his two crewmates walked on the surface below. No one was watching him through a television camera.
- Apollo 14Apollo 14 launched on the 31st of January 1971, carrying three astronauts on a mission that no one in the program could afford to lose.
- Alan ShepardAlan Bartlett Shepard Jr. awoke at 01:10 on the 5th of May 1961, ate a breakfast of orange juice, a filet mignon wrapped in bacon, and scrambled eggs, then…
- Apollo Lunar ModuleThe Apollo Lunar Module is the only crewed vehicle in history to land somewhere beyond Earth. That fact alone is worth sitting with.
- David ScottDavid Randolph Scott was born on the 6th of June 1932 at Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas. His middle name came directly from that base, a fitting…
- Alfred WordenAlfred Worden was, for three days in 1971, the most isolated human being who had ever lived. While his crewmates David Scott and James Irwin walked on the…
- Edgar MitchellEdgar Dean Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the Moon, and on his way home, something happened to him that no training could have prepared him for.
- Saturn VSaturn V stands 363 feet tall, taller than the Statue of Liberty by a wide margin, and when its five F-1 engines fired together during a test at what is now…
- Salyut programmeIn August 1969, engineers at OKB-1 began merging two distinct space station designs into a single project. Vladimir Chelomey's NPO Mashinostroyeniya had…
- James IrwinJames Benson Irwin told his mother, when he was about 12 years old, that he wanted to go to the Moon and might be the first person to do so.
- Soyuz (rocket family)Soyuz holds the record for the most launches in the history of spaceflight. That single fact, buried in technical documents and launch logs, is extraordinary…