This is a list of human spaceflight programs, including successful programs, programs that were canceled, and programs planned for the future. The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary. The FAI defines spaceflight as any flight over 100 kilometres (62 mi). However, in the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 80 kilometres (50 mi) are awarded astronaut wings.
Until the 21st century, spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, either by the military or by civilian space agencies. However, with the launch of the privately-funded SpaceShipOne in 2005, a new category of spaceflight programs – commercial spaceflight – arrived.
Programs in this article are sorted by the years when their development started.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, human and/or programs:
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly—because if they don’t speak fast nobody will listen to them.”
—Michael Caine [Maurice Joseph Micklewhite] (b. 1933)
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)