With wich manned spacecraft did you grow up with?

[NSEP]

3 minutes ago, HoloYolo said:

Back to the main topic though, the Soyuz and Space Shuttle in my childhood were fading things. Every launch went from a spectacular event down to a daily small story. Such a sad thing that space travel isn't that much of a topic anymore.

Agreed. Luckily, Elon Musk is warming up the topic. Im glad he exists! 

2 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

Shuttle. Only watched one launch and that was Atlantis's final one. Only really gotten into space as of last year.

I got interested in space back in the late 2000's, when my dad showed me a picture in the newspaper of Soyuz launch. Then i got interested into space travel. I remember when my dad told me the last space shuttle was going to launch. And some time afterwards he told me they are going to "secretly" launch another one, but thats just a good old daddy lie.

[HoloYolo]

17 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Agreed. Luckily, Elon Musk is warming up the topic. Im glad he exists! 

Thank the lucky stars for that guy. People are starting to care more about space because of him. Elon Musk will go down in my book as "Saviour of the Cosmos".

[NSEP]

My dad was born before the last Moon landing. But he was just too young to remember when that happend. He also was not a space geek so he wont really let those things be in his memory lane.

[tater]

Really R7 and Soyuz would have been my choice had the Soviets been more open about their space program. The US stuff was always live, and broadcast using the best available video tech. Since Soviet stuff was always secret, then dribbled out after the fact, it never got covered. Had they offered ABC, CBS, NBC live coverage, I'm sure they would have jumped at it, and we would have seen Soviet missions.

So it really didn't get much coverage until ISS, and even then, Shuttle was relatively routine, and most people didn't care.

Launches were still covered, though. I was shaving when my wife (then girlfriend) told me "the shuttle exploded," my reaction was to tell her that that wasn't something to joke about. Sadly, she wasn't joking. 

[razark]

I was born not long after Apollo-Soyuz.

My earliest memory of the space program is seeing Columbia during a stopover on the way to Florida.  I don't know if it was before the first flight, or after one of the early ones, but the SCA was still wearing the American Airlines colors.  (Taking my kids to see the last shuttle to come through was kind of sad.)  In elementary school, we used to have a fire drill every time a shuttle was being ferried through, and we'd all get to go outside to watch the flybys.  I also remember Saturday morning cartoons being interrupted for launches and landings.  Later on, after NASA Select started broadcasting, my father would have the television on from launch through most of the mission, unless he was watching news or football.

I also have very early memories of the Mercury Redstone, Little Joe II, and Saturn V at JSC, along with the various other items on display at the visitor center before the Disney version opened across the street.

 

3 hours ago, tater said:

Since Soviet stuff was always secret, then dribbled out after the fact, it never got covered.

My father told me that during the build-up to Apollo-Soyuz, the Soviet government wouldn't allow their people to attend a rocket launch at KSC (even going so far as to have them somewhere else at the time) because they would have to reciprocate, and they weren't going to have any Americans anywhere near one of their launches.

[Guest]

When I got into spaceflight, the shuttle was already decommissioned, and since I have a slight bias towards Russian engineering, I'd say ISS and Soyuz. But hey, I'm 16. Who knows.

[Just Jim]

The first I really remember well as a kid was the Apollo Moon landing. Been watching them all ever since... 

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Shuttle, but I remember there were a lot of jokes in popular media about Mir

[MaxxQ]

I barely remember watching Neil step off the ladder.  I was just a couple months short of five years old.

[tater]

24 minutes ago, MaxxQ said:

I barely remember watching Neil step off the ladder.  I was just a couple months short of five years old.

I was about the same age. Since I've seen the footage so many times since, I discount those memories, but I remember the event of it. Family was at our house (grandparents... maybe aunt and uncle), and ti was night, and a big deal that I got to be up.

[MaxxQ]

40 minutes ago, tater said:

I was about the same age. Since I've seen the footage so many times since, I discount those memories, but I remember the event of it. Family was at our house (grandparents... maybe aunt and uncle), and ti was night, and a big deal that I got to be up.

Yeah, same here, although I DO actually remember watching it, as I was lying on the floor in front of the TV.  IIRC, it was around 11 pm EST.

[tater]

I was living in Wisconsin at the time (we had moved from the Boston area). My mom had sat me up to watch every launch since I was born, actually. It was not until the Shuttle era that I missed a few.

[TheEpicSquared]

Shuttle for me

[septemberWaves]

The ISS is almost exactly as old as I am, so I've grown up during its construction. However, the space shuttles were decommissioned before I really gained a major interest in real space exploration, and most of what I really remember happening as it happened is SpaceX's Falcon 9 development.

As for specifically crewed spacecraft, I remember quite a few Soyuz launches recently, but my focus has been on the Dragon 2 development since SpaceX is a major interest for me.

Edited December 6, 2016 by eloquentJane

[TheKosanianMethod]

I grew up with the tail end of the Shuttle. I remember Discovery on the 747 en route to the Udvar-Hazy going over our school.

[Ultimate Steve]

I'm a bit new. I've been fascinated with space for most of my life, but the space shuttle was retired before I started getting into launch webcasts. I've seen Soyuz and Shenzou launches, but I've only seen one of each. So once crew Dragon launches, I'll say Crew Dragon.

[Spacetraindriver]

Soyuz MA and the space shuttle. And the Shenzou but you said favorite sooooo.