What triggered your interest in spaceflight

[RainDreamer]

Hmm...I have been a scientifically minded person before and have been interested in some space stuff through sci-fi, but the thing that really makes me interested in spaceflight, the engineering and the physics mechanics behind it, is KSP. It makes me that much more appreciate the genius behind rocket launches, and I am awe not only by the spectacle of a rocket taking off, but the planning and science in the background that is needed to make everything possible.

[Thomas988]

Throughout elementary school, I was on and off with my interest in astronomy, but never spaceflight. frockets, manned exploration., etc. always seemed boring to me. Then KSP happened! I found this game in one of those "off" periods of my space interest, but within days I was not only going insane about space but also space exploration. Now I follow the news, do research, get involved in communities, and input it into my daily life.

Thanks, Squad!

[CelticCossack51]

In elementary school, there was a unit for space for science. I thought it was going to be boring, since I was friends with a Star Wars fanboy, but I was completely surprised how awesome space was in real life. I started to do some astronomy, but I also had my interest in history. Somehow, my interest in space and history merged and started focusing on space exploration instead of astronomy. And yes, KSP helped me understand the basic mechanics of a rocket and space navigation.

[Brethern]

It was the first trip to my schools library when I was in grade 1 there was this book with information about most of the american missions.

Don't remember the name but it was hardcover with black and yellow strips that's what started the interest. Then when I was about seven my aunt was babysitting me and she had the Apollo 13 movie on VHS she let me watch it and that's where it started.

I remember thinking that landing on the moon was cool and all, but managing to get a crippled spacecraft home using equipment in ways that it was never designed for was more interesting.

[*Aqua*]

My dad has a big library and almost all of the books contain sci fi storys (~400 books total). So I read through the library (several times over the years) starting with the age of ~10. Some years later my parents thought it might be a good idea to give me a telescope on christmas and a book about astronomy. That really got me interested about space especially after seeing Saturn with my own eyes. The telescope was really cheap: The magnification was low and the image a bit blurry but I could make out the rings! Hell yeah!

Later my interests shifted to something different but I still have a passion about space. And I still own that telescope (should be almost 20 years old). ;-)

From time to time I look up websites about amateur sky watchers (is that the right name?) to check out prices for a decent telescope and maybe a fitting camera. Confronted by reality I turn around saying to myself that I don't have time to sit all night staring at the sky and investing >750 € for hardware. Maybe I should check out some amateur associations to let me have a look through their telescopes - just to find out if observing the sky still fits me.

[Ethanadams]

My interest started when I liked physics and orbital mechanics so I bought ksp (worth it) which just skyrocketed my interest in space

[Jeb1969]

After watching the 1995 film Apollo 13, that and making mock space capsules using blankets, folding tables and chairs and sofa cushions, I also remember one time my brother and I connected the mock capsule with some of those foldable crawl tunnels with a regular rod supported camping tent to create a mock "space station."

Edited May 30, 2017 by Jeb1969
I don't Know

[Superfluous J]

When I was fairly young, my family went on a trip to Texas and while there, went to the space center in Houston. Back then, the Saturn-5 wasn't in a huge warehouse but was instead just lying on the lawn. It as pretty cool, but that wasn't the trigger. The trigger was a little toy space shuttle (that was a new thing at the time) about the size of Hot Wheel (and of similar construction) that I played with incessantly on the drive until we got home (over 1000 miles away). I'd hold it in front of the window and dodge things as we drove by. I'd expertly land it on the car seat, the door handle, or the seat in front of me. I'd go to all the planets and explore them.

I had no idea at the time of course that the shuttle was little more than a pickup truck for space, or that it couldn't get out of LEO. Or what LEO was. It did space, and that was cool.

Later in life (but not much) I'd start reading Asimov and Heinlein and OMNI magazine and all that, but looking back it was that little toy that really started it all.

[Cuky]

I got interested into space flight in late 90s (I was about 8 years old) when The Cape was shown on TV here in Croatia. In early 2000s I got hooked up to Star Trek because my father liked to watch it and the rest is, as they say, a history. I realized that it is not all just in fiction when Mir was de-orbited, while I realized how dangerous space flight really is when Columbia accident happened.

As for the physics part, it started to interest me more when I was near the end with my high school and when I finally started to understand more complex things through physics classes.

[cubinator]

I've always been fascinated by the night sky. I always get this feeling, ever since I was a little kid, that draws me to it. I read lots of books about space in elementary school, and I learned about planets and stars and the Big Bang, galaxies, supernovae, moons, asteroids, probes, rockets, astronauts, everything. I first decided I wanted to be an astronaut when I was five, and I am determined to get there still. I've also been captivated by entomology since second grade when we had a science unit where we got to see lots of exotic insects, but there has never been an entomologist astronaut as far as I can tell. I could play it safe and go with engineering or robotics or astrophysics, or I could take the biggest dice roll of my life and try to become the first. Insects are rather important to plant life, it probably wouldn't hurt to being a few along to Mars for whatever farm we put there.

[Spaceception]

When I was 11, my scout troop went to Oregon for summer camp, now, I was never interested in spaceflight before then, I was more into art, but one of the merit badges they were offering was 'Space exploration' so I gave it a shot, I still didn't know much about it at the end of the week, but i did get to fly my model rocket 2 times, and after that, I've been absolutely hooked on pretty much everything space, and I really want a career in it. I also watched Star Wars.

 

I absolutely suck at math though

Edited June 5, 2016 by Spaceception

[Bill Phil]

42 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

I absolutely suck at math though

So does a good number of aerospace engineers. They never work alone. They check each other's work. Nowadays they mostly punch numbers into programs.

On topic:

I don't know. Maybe it was a bunch of sci fo shows or something.

[Andem]

One night, I was just out walking, I looked up into the night sky, saw the full moon, and boom. I knew, in my lifetime I wanted to go there. I wanted to step foot on an alien world, feel 0g, See earth in the distance. Since then, I've casually made a bigger effort to follow spaceflight, and that, at this point, has lead me to KSP. 

[Dispatcher]

What triggered my interest in space flight?  The space age.

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

Wondering about the stars started when I was no older than 6 or 7, and my babysitters little brother convinced me that what I would later learn is Orion's Belt was UFO's in a line. My mother debunked that and explained what astronomy was.

Forward time to about 5th grade, there was a section about space and American space flight curriculum to prepare us for a 3 day field trip to Houston, where I saw the almighty Saturn V laying there in the grass. I saw the inside of the room where "failure is not an option" and "main B bus under volt" and "Houston, we have a problem" were all quoted into existence. I didn't care about the theme park the next day, I wanted to stay at the space center every day. The mock-up shuttle cockpit was amazing to me.

But as with almost all adults, childhood dreams die and spirit dwindles. I watched the steam trailer for KSP and with no hesitations bought it, and haven't looked back since. It's rekindled the dreams and the spirit and all the feelings of awe I felt when I saw the rockets I'd only seen pictures of come to life at the space center in Houston.

[Guest]

Well, I've always liked space. What really brought me into it was being introduced to Physics. And then KSP happened.

KSP made my interest in spaceflight go skyrocket (oh look, a pun).

[icedown]

One of the farthest back things I can remember was being in line at Disney World in Florida and them broadcasting the Challenger explosion over all the monitors there, 3 days later we visited KSC (the real one).  I was only 5 at the time, but I can still remember it happening.  I got my first Estes rocket from there as well, still have the box somewhere.  That was around the time Sally Ride released her book "To Space & Back" and I was permanently hooked. 

[CAKE99]

KSP, around the time I got it (July 2013-ish) I didn't really play it much because my PC was REALLY bad, (Windows XP).

For the past year my interest in space has skyrocketed (pun intended) due to KSP.

[p1t1o]

Can you please censor the word "spaceflight" it is one of my trigger words.

hueheuheuehuehue

[Ten Key]

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1599003.C_O_L_A_R_

[pTrevTrevs]

I think for me is was back in 2004 when the Mars Exploration Rovers landed. The news was doing a story about it and playing an animation of the landing. I thought it was so cool how they used parachutes and airbags to land on Mars. Today when I watch what I think is the same animation I saw in 2004 (I don't know, there are several of them out there), I realize how bad it looks compared to what we see today, but back then I thought it was the  coolest thing ever. Even today, the fact that one of the rovers is still active on Mars when it was originally built for a 90 day mission astounds me.

The other things were an animation I saw of the Constellation Moon landing around the same time I saw the MER animation, and one night I was up late and the movie Apollo 13 was on. At the time I didn't know anything about the mission (Hell, it took me about a dozen tries just to spell Apollo correctly when I described the movie to others), but the sort of improvised techniques they used to survive, as well as seeing them float around the spacecraft made me consider being an astronaut one day.

Edited June 16, 2016 by pTrevTrevs

[SSgt Baloo]

I think it was sitting down in front of the TV one Saturday morning when I was five or six years old, and discovering that cartoons had been pre-empted by a Gemini launch (ISTR it was Gemini 7, but it's been a while). At first I was livid, but my oldest sister reminded me that the NASA animations were a sort of cartoon anyway, and I realized this meant that Space Angel, Fireball XL-5, and Rocket Robin Hood had been lying to me all along.

Edited June 18, 2016 by SSgt Baloo