Spacecraft stats and insights

The Space Review ^ | 4/5/2010 | by Claude Lafleur

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Piloted spaceships, planetary probes, and space telescopes fascinate people. That’s easy to understand since these spacecraft make the discoveries of our time. Nevertheless, this is only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” since they account for less than 10% of all spacecraft ever launched. What are the other 90% for? Who launched them and for what purpose?

It’s worth noting that it is impossible to establish a definitive number of spacecraft launched since it depends of how you count them. Answering these questions tells us a lot about what’s going on in space. For example, more than a quarter of all spacecraft launched are used for communications, both civil and military. The country that launched the greatest number of spacecraft is by far Russia, with 57% of the total. And while in the first three decades of the Space Age two-thirds of all spacecraft were launched for military purposes, it’s been the opposite since 1995. Another interesting topic is rockets: what is the risk of flying anyone of them, and which country had the best ones? Such an overview also gives us a look at what the future can bring, specially for China. What the last forty years of Chinese’s space activities tell us about the future of this country?

Here is an overview of space activities from the standpoint of spacecraft launched. (All data are as of December 31, 2009 and are available on my Spacecraft Encyclopedia.)

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Ping

[onedoug]

Piloted spaceships, planetary probes, and space telescopes fascinate people.

Not soetoro, and not islamodemocommucrats.

[kosciusko51]

Well, they have watch “Star Trek” and there are no Muslims in the 23rd century...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sonofstrangelove.