Talk:List of human spaceflights

Naming and organisation of these pages
1. "List of human spaceflights" reads slightly oddly to me. Wouldn't "List of manned spaceflights" be better?

2. Is there any particular reason why the list is split the way it is? If the list must be split for page size reasons then I feel it would be more logical to split into decades. So, "List of manned spaceflights, 1960s", "List of manned spaceflights, 1970s" etc.

Any objections? Matt 23:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC).

Response by BuffaloChip97 17:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Human spaceflight is used as a PC term. Women have been flying in space regularly since 1983.

2. I thought division points seemed to arbitrary. I am not opposed to splitting the list by decade.


 * Yes, I realise that "human spaceflight" is intended to be PC, but is it really necessary? It sounds most unnatural to me, conjuring up images of "humans" being projected into space like a human cannonball. In this post-PC-gone-mad day and age will anyone really be offended by the (to me) much more natural term "manned spaceflight"? Surely it's obvious that it includes women? Matt 20:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC).


 * Just as postscript, I think that "human spaceflight" reads OK when used as a general concept - in phrases such as, for example, "the history of human spaecflight". What sounds odd to me are references to "a human spacflight", "list of human spaceflights" etc., as we have here. Matt 21:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Page reorganisation
Since no-one has objected above, I have re-split these lists into decades. Hopefully I have not broken anything; for the record I created a one-off user account "Human spaceflights reorg", and the record of changes made is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Human_spaceflights_reorg. I have not changed "human" to "manned" (as I was tempted to) because this is potentially contentious, and because there are other articles that also use "human" in the title. Matt 13:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC).

"manned" flights vs. flights "with human crews"
I suggest (and have edited this page to relect) use of the term "with human crews." Although this may seem overly verbose, it is both politically and factually correct, without being entirely too cumbersome for use in an encyclopedia. (I assume all members of X-15 flight crews were of masculine gender, and thus retained the term "manned" in that context. ;-) Sdsds 06:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Reorganisation of articles
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.7.49 (talk) 19:49, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Arithmetic Error on Summary Table
As of this writing, the "summary table" lists 127 flights for Russia, but gives the column sum as 125. The grand total (300)reflects this 125, but is not the sum of the decade totals (rightmost column). I'm just passing through, but I thought I'd mention... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.212.156 (talk) 06:04, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, after counting again I have made the necessary corrections. Flo422 (talk) 22:34, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

What does the summary table show? It should be explained in the article. Asgrrr (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Total number of astronaut flights flown by launch country
Dec. 19, 2018: The chart https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Number_of_humans_launched_into_space_bar_chart.png was removed and replaced with a fluff pic on Feb. 3, 2017:

(cur | prev) 15:53, 3 February 2017‎ Fotaun (talk | contribs)‎. . (9,915 bytes) +130‎. . (undo)

What's up with that??!

The chart: "Chart of all humans launched into space as of December the 31st, 2015, Including unsuccessful launches" shows the number of humans for each year launched into space.

I think it would be useful to have the totals for this graph - the total number of humans launched by US, Russia, China, and private missions into orbital or suborbital trajectories. I was looking for these figures and couldn't find them anywhere in wikipedia in the statistics pages and this is the most natural place to put it, perhaps add the numbers to the caption for that figure. Should count astronauts multiple times if they do several launches into space (could have separate figures for the total number of astronauts excluding multiple flights). Thanks! Robert Walker (talk) 11:36, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

clarify list
What do the letters mean that follow each decade?
 * 2.1	1961-1970 F
 * 2.2	1971-1980 M
 * 2.3	1981-1990 AM
 * 2.4	1991-2000 AMA
 * 2.5	2001-2010 DC
 * 2.6	2011-present CG

thanks --GeeBee60 (talk) 07:44, 17 October 2018 (UTC)


 * They were just vandalism. I've removed them. Tomalamak (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Proposition to bring back the Kármán line definition
The article was widely changed (see diff page) to take into account the US military definition of spaceflight, over the international definition known as Kármán line.

Notably, the following paragraph was removed :

''There are two definitions of spaceflight. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping body, defines the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space at 62 mi above sea level. This boundary is known as the Kármán line. Additionally, the United States military awards astronaut wings to qualified personnel who pilot a spaceflight above an altitude of 50 mi. Unless otherwise specified, "spaceflight" and related terms only apply to flights which went beyond the Kármán line.''

Multiple flights of the X-15 (that did not reach the Kármán line]) also have been added.

I think that an international definition (rather than an US military one) better suits wikipedia, and I am under the impression that the Kármán line definition is widely accepted within the space-loving community, so I would like to undo those changes.

What do you think ?

LazyAssed Contender (talk) 11:27, 6 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The Kármán still is the line used on this page, that never changed. The only thing that changed is moving some flights from an independent chart into one. Flights that go above 50 mi (80 km) but below 62 mi (100 km) are marked in bold in accordance with the key. Doing this better organizes the page and provides the reader with a single, full list in chronological order. The main list previously included some flights that didn't reach either line. The Kármán line is still the definition of space used in the article. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 01:28, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Table
Should we merge the Scaled Composites and Virgin Orbit columns? Weird business stuff apart they are the same family of rockets and dont overlap. IMO the same should be done for the Soviet Union and Russia, someone would just need to split the decade row into 1990-1991 and 1992-1999 without making it look strange. Russia is legal successor to the Soviet Union, the Soyuz program is still the same and they even use the same launch site. Making the table a bit more compact and legible wouldnt hurt. jonas (talk) 18:50, 26 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd rather combine the Program & date columns into one. Since both of those (S.C. / V.G. & USSR/Russia) are still separate entities. Combining the Program & date columns is a better long term solution IMO because there will inevitable be more companies & countries that will have to get added. Doing it the other way just kicks the can down the road. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 20:01, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Use of cursive for 80-100km flights
I don't know about other people's systems, but for me, the italic (failed to reach space) and cursive (80-100km) text look exactly the same to me. I cannot tell which X15 flights are italic or cursive. Can we use something else for the 80-100km OR the failed flights? Bold perhaps, or parentheses? Tom walker (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The formatting for both "cursive" and "italic" is the same so there is no difference between the two. I too had noticed the two markings seemed to look identical and it was only after seeing your comment that I decided to see what the difference was. I think there should be a difference between failed flights, 80-100km and over 100km flights. It might be nice to distinguish Suborbital, LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and LTO (Lunar Transfer Orbit) as well but that might be pushing things for this page.
 * Could we just show the failed flights (sub 80km) in italics and the rest in normal text? Jnargus (talk) 20:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)