First Flight:
Breaking In New Spacecraft

Sometime around 2011, NASA will be testing the successor to the Shuttle. It will be the agency's first new manned spacecraft to be flown since 1981.

The new Constellation program—with the Ares booster and Orion spacecraft—will be the successor to Apollo and the Shuttle program. It will be a hybrid of both, with an Apollo-like command module, and SRBs (solid-rocket fuel boosters) like the Shuttle.

But Orion will be the 4th manned spacecraft that America has produced. And the first flight of Orion will be NASA 4th first flight of a new space craft.

Alan Shepherd, in April 1961, took Freedom 7 into a sub-orbital flight. This was a dangerous mission—the booster was built to put a missile into space, not a man. But it worked and Shepherd, and the other Mercury astronauts, survived those early flights.

Gemini, for the first time, took 2 Americans into space together. Gus Grissom and John Young did the shake-down flight in the Gemini 3 spacecraft (called the "Molly Brown." )
[ more ]

Tony Bartlett's Exploratory displays the actual backup of the Mir Space Station!

Visit our friends at collectspace.com!

Now with MORE MUSEUMS!
Learn about, rate and comment on space museums and exhibits. See THE LIST!