Space Stations
Less than two decades after the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, lifted off into orbit on October 4, 1957, U.S. astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts were living and working in space stations hundred of miles above Earth's surface. The scientific foundations of such orbital outposts had been laid down almost seventy years previous; the dream of living in space had been imagined more than a century before.
A space station is a large orbiting structure designed for long-term human habitation in space. The first space station was a diversion, of sorts, from the space race, the contest to achieve superiority in spaceflight between the democratic, capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union (present day Russia). By the end of the 1960s, after the United States had placed astronauts on the Moon, the Soviet Union quietly gave up its quest of a manned lunar (moon) landing and shifted its focus instead to the launching of the first space station.
In the last two-and-one-half decades of the twentieth century, a number of space stations were placed into Earth orbit, mostly by the Soviets. Although originally envisioned as a way station for piloted missions to the Moon and beyond (where
they could stop to refuel or take on additional cargo), these vessels far surpassed that goal.
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