Thirty-one astronauts have made a return-trip to Mars. Well, not quite but they have put in the requisite hours in space. That's just one of the surprising insights to come out of a recent attempt to chart humanity's 52-year history in space. <\/p>\n
Gilles Clment and Angelia Bukley of the International Space University in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France, used publicly available information from the US, Russian and Chinese space programmes. Between 12 April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin took a single orbit around the Earth on board the Soviet Vostok-1 craft and December 2013, they counted the humans who have flown to space, how long they collectively spent there and who they were. <\/p>\n
We picked out our favourites six insights, then put them in context with data from elsewhere. <\/p>\n
1. Astronauts are as common as Nobel prizewinners <\/p>\n
As of 31 December 2013, 539 individuals had been to space, defined as reaching an altitude of 100 kilometres or more. That's a rate of about 10 per year, and roughly equivalent to the 566 people who have ever won a Nobel prize in a science subject (physics, chemistry, or physiology\/medicine). <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Note: Clment and Bukley's analysis does not include the two commercial astronauts who piloted the SpaceShipOne test flights in 2004, who were in space for just a few minutes each.) <\/p>\n
2. Space trips last days, months but rarely years <\/p>\n
Gagarin's single orbit of the Earth lasted just 108 minutes. Clment and Bukley found that of a total of 1211 person-flights, defined as a single crew member flying one mission, most last less than a month. Presumably these short hops were trips to the moon and missions spent inside NASA's now-retired space shuttle, to build and repair the International Space Station. But a significant minority spent five or six months, representing stays on board the ISS. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Originally posted here: <\/p>\n
A brief history of space flight - in numbers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirty-one astronauts have made a return-trip to Mars. Well, not quite but they have put in the requisite hours in space. That's just one of the surprising insights to come out of a recent attempt to chart humanity's 52-year history in space. Continue reading