Every single crewed mission to space — on one definitive map

Future space cowboys and girls, stick this on your wall as you beat a path to the stars. This poster is a snapshot of humanity’s loftiest enterprise so far: making it off-planet. It maps Earth’s main spaceports, the landing sites on the Moon, the highest and farthest orbits traveled by us humans, and the spectacular array of suits and vehicles that got us there.

Liftoff from Baikonur

Crewed spaceflight is barely 65 years old. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin rocketed off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a trip around Earth. Despite its brevity — just one hour and 48 minutes from launch to landing — that single orbit around the planet was, pardon the pun, revolutionary.

Gagarin was not only the first human in orbit, but his safe return proved that crewed spaceflight was possible. He opened the door for everyone who came after. This Soviet success also shocked the U.S. into accelerating its own space program, helping the nation achieve the first Moon landing just eight years later.

The space race has turned into a stampede. Nearly 19,000 satellites now orbit Earth, including nearly 3,000 dead ones. Other pieces of space junk — rocket bodies, debris fragments, etc. — number in the tens of thousands. More than a dozen countries have independent orbital launch capability, including Israel, Iran, and both Koreas.

While space launches have become fairly common, crewed spaceflights remain prestigious and rare. How many people have traveled to outer space? The exact number depends on your definition of “outer space.”

Where does “outer space” begin?

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the international record-keeping body for spaceflight, defines “outer space” as beginning 100 km (62 miles) above sea level, the so-called Kármán line. If you follow that definition, about 650 people have been to space.

However, if you use the threshold generally recognized by U.S. entities — 80 km (50 miles) above sea level — the number is higher because you’d have to include flights of the legendary X-15, a hypersonic 1960s rocket-powered plane, and the more recent ascents of the first batches of space tourists, some of whom have traveled above 50 miles but still below the Kármán line.

In 2021, William Shatner traveled just above the Kármán line aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Despite playing a space captain on television and in film for decades, Shatner (who was 90 at the time, making him the oldest person to travel in space until Ed Dwight’s trip in 2024) was still moved to tears by the visit.

His reaction wasn’t unheard of. Others have experienced deep emotions when observing Earth from space. The phenomenon is known as the “overview effect,” and in Shatner’s case, seeing the thin blue line of Earth’s atmosphere holding back the cold black void of space manifested as a sudden, grievous realization of humanity’s vulnerability.

Not for the claustrophobic

Ironically, exploring the vastness of outer space is not for the claustrophobic. The huge rockets are deceptive: Crew capsules are tiny. Gagarin was essentially strapped to an ejection seat inside a largeish cannonball.

The Mercury capsules, carrying America’s first astronauts, were barely larger. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in Friendship 7 in February 1962, was basically fitted into his craft, rather than entering it.

Gemini was a bit roomier, with roughly the interior volume of a compact car. Still, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell had to live in that space for almost 14 days, as Gemini 7 tested the ability of humans to remain in orbit long enough for a trip to and from the Moon.

In a spacecraft, room is precious because there is so little of it, but there are small wins. On the way to the Moon, the Apollo 11 crew had to eat, work, and sleep in the same cramped cabin. Weightlessness made the available volume more usable, though — the astronauts could float to the “roof” of the cabin for extra space.

The size of a Boeing 747

The difference between surviving in space and inhabiting it is enormous, especially psychologically. With the first space stations, extended stays and better scientific experiments became possible.

In 1973, Skylab, America’s first space station, was built around a converted Saturn V rocket stage. This gave astronauts enough room to actually float around and gave them access to separate areas for sleeping, eating, and working. They even had a shower. After a decade of being inserted into spacecraft like components, American astronauts finally had a bit of room.

Today’s International Space Station (ISS), which has hosted nearly 300 of the approximately 700 people who’ve been in space, has an internal pressurized volume comparable to a Boeing 747. It is by far the most spacious home humanity has ever had away from Earth, at least so far.

Different demographics

Space travel has had tragedies as well as its triumphs, slow decades as well as periods of rapid advance. The story is far from over, too.

SpaceX has pioneered reusable rockets and may one day achieve its ambition of landing people on Mars. Meanwhile, the space race is no longer running on a two-lane highway — China started sending people into space more than two decades ago.

Who will be the space cowboys and girls of the future? It’s likely their demographics will skew differently from their predecessors.

Roughly 85% of the people who’ve visited space so far were men. More than 50% were American, about 140 have hailed from Russia or the USSR, and around 30 have been from China. In all, citizens of 55 countries have gone to space, either through one of these three nations’ space programs or a commercial operator.

One of those space visitors, Canadian Guy Laliberté, is a former street performer and founder of Cirque du Soleil. He dubbed himself “the first clown in space” when he visited the ISS in 2009, red nose and all, which is to say we’re past the point where spacefarers need to be former pilots. Even if you don’t fly jets for a living, you could go to space.

But likely not on NASA’s next major crewed mission: Artemis III, scheduled to carry four astronauts into low-Earth orbit in 2027. It’s a preparatory mission for 2028’s Artemis IV, which aims to put humans on the Moon for the first since 1972.

This article is featured on Big Think.