The new era of human spaceflight

There's been a step-change in crewed space missions since the dawn of the 21st century. Ben Evans charts its course and looks ahead to future horizons

- Ben Evans

Six decades ago, human spaceflight was a two-sided coin, as the United States and Soviet Russia competed for primacy in the Space Race during the Cold War. With global nuclear holocaust looming menacingly on the horizon, parallel space programmes arose on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain: Mercury versus Vostok, Gemini versus Voskhod, Soyuz versus Apollo and the Space Shuttle.

Today, this East/West duopoly has ceded a few grains of its dominance to newer players. National actors like China and India have emerged like a whirlwind, along with a growing chorus of commercial entities from Boeing to SpaceX, and Blue Origin to Virgin Galactic, all hungrily eyeing the space domain.

When Yuri Gagarin conquered space in April 1961, the door creaked ajar for others to follow. But initially, those 'others' were exclusively military; for the average person in the street, the chance to fly into space was a door that was firmly barred and bolted.

Today, fewer than 700 souls - less than 0.00001 per cent of the world's 8.1 billion population - have experienced microgravity and seen Earth as it truly is: a fragile, glowing oasis of colour set jewel-like against the ethereal darkness of the cosmos.

And when that miniscule number filters down to 'ordinary' people like you and me, the odds of reaching space are vanishingly remote. We humans are a long way from becoming a spacefaring species.

Yet with new spacecraft taking shape, this status quo is on the cusp of monumental change.

Despite their decades-held duopoly, Russia and the United States have courted participation from other nations and walks of life in a highly visible example of politicised soft power. Between the 1960s and the close of the 20th century, the number of first-time space travellers quadrupled, from 45 individuals (including one woman) from two nations to 170 individuals (including 28 women) from 14 nations.