History of space programs

[Nemrav]

Hello, today I decided to start a thread dedicated to real life space programs (their history) but with one big twist NO USA OR RUSSIA...

why no Usa or Russia ?, because we hear about them all the time literally, we never really hear the other space faring nations...

some examples of nations with little known space programs..

though I really only know about the csa, the others i've just heard mentioned, so I only mention their nationality

Canadian space program --- or more commonly the Canadian space agency, first nation other than usa or russia to build its own satellite and obviously the canada arms..

The Uk's space program -- first nation other than the usa or russia to operate a satellite.

China -- well, their plans for the future are so big its impossible to not to mention

Israel -- forget, but they gave a contribution

I think but i'm not sure about south Korea

Japan -- many scientific contributions

don't give me european space agency, I want the nations in it....

hope this thread picks some interest, and maybe once we've run out of nations, we'l allow a last minute russia and usa...

if this has already be done, please notify me and i'l delete the thread/ask somebody else to delete it...

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

You forgot something about Canada - Their rocket, the Black Brant series. Over 800 have been launched

[Nemrav]

look, the point is that i was giving some examples, I wasn't going to do the history right then and there... but isn't the black brant only a sounding rocket (high atmosphere only) ?, because the government thinks its an ok idea to develop space rockets of its own, but the costs outway the benefits...

oh well, guess I might as well give another example, just for you, Canada was the first nation to launch a stationary orbit satellite for itself, allowed cbc to reach the territories... and another thing... why are there so many Canadians playing KSP..... we are the second biggest group after anonymous...

[jmiki8]

My country, Hungary had only 3 missions previously (though it's now contributing to ESA projects by researching stuff and producing some parts):

-Hungary's first astronaut cosmonaut was Bertalan Farkas, who got into space with the Soyuz 36 alongside Valery Kubasov, in 1980. They docked with Salyut-6.

-The second and last Hungarian in space was the Hungarian-American Charles Simonyi (Simonyi Károly). He was the fifth space-tourist in the world. He flew 2 times: first with the Soyuz TMA-10/9 in 2007, then the Soyuz TMA-14/13 in 2009. He visited the ISS.

-The last achievement was the launch of the MaSat-1 cubesat in 2012 (it was launched alongside other cubesats during an ESA mission). It's still in orbit, and it's functional so far (not that bad for a cubesat).

The most advanced science university in Hungary, the BME develops many space-related stuff, like telescopes, engine-prototypes, rovers, etc, mostly in cooperation with other European countries. The MaSat-1 was also built by them.

There's also a small private space "company", which is a competitor in the Google X Prize: Team Puli (Puli is a Hungarian dog breed)

Edited March 2, 2014 by jmiki8

[Nemrav]

fine, to get the thread going (do want this to be mega thread) i'l start with what im familiar with, the Canadian space agency and Canadian space program.

-Canadian high altitude rocketry development started at CARDE, a military R&D facility. In 1955, anti-ballistic missiles were being developed. They researched for ideal propellants, sent weather balloons into high atmosphere and detection and tracking of hyper-sonic flight.

To test new knowledge gained in propulsion and high atmosphere, they ordered a rocket that could accomodate many different engines and burn types (it was solid rocket fuel), this design later evolved into the black brant sounding rocket, which until this day, remains the most popular sounding rocket world wide, still used frequently by NASA and CSA. They also happened to do research into orbital docking.

-1957, the defence research telecomunications establishment starts work on project s-27.

-1962, S-27, now heavily modified and known as the allouette I is launched into orbit by NASA's thor-agena rocket, making Canada the third nation to build its own satellite. The allouette's mission is to research the ionosphere, it lasts 10 years compared to the estimated 1 and was calculated to stay in orbit for 1000 years. Some people believe that if the right signals are sent it could be re-activated.

-1972 the Anik A1 is launched, it is the first nationally domestic geostationary satellites

-1990 The canadian space agency act is passed, it establishes the Canadian space agency.

-made the Canada arm add-on for the space shuttle.

-the CSP has, in addition to the Canadaarm2, contributed the entire mobile servicing system on the ISS.

today there are plans for the designing of mars/lunar rovers, satellites to observe polar weather and developing its own orbital flight rockets. The later only being considered.

Feel free to add the astronauts part...

[Simon Ross]

To our ever lasting shame the United Kingdom is the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned a satellite launch capability.

What could have been :-(

[Nibb31]

The French space program started, like the US and USSR, after WWII, by tinkering with captured V2s, but that program wasn't very successful and was closed down because the government wanted to concentrate on anti-aircraft missiles.

Charles de Gaulle started the french nuclear program in 1958 and it quickly became apparent that rockets would be necessary as a vector for French nukes. The French space program was officially started in 1959, with the creation of CNES in 1962. The first French satellite Asterix was launched into orbit in 1965 on a Diamant rocket from Hammaguir in French Algeria. This made France the 3rd country to develop an orbital launcher.

Because of the Algerian independence war, it became clear that France couldn't continue launching from the Sahara launch site, so the Centre Spatial Guyanais was created at Kourou in French Guyana in 1964 and agreement was met with the new Algerian government to allow France to use Hammaguir until 1966 (a similar agreement existed for nuclear tests which were also conducted nearby Hammaguir)

About the same time, the ancestor of ESA, called ELDO, was created, including France and the UK, to build a common launcher called (unimaginatively) Europa. Europa was launched from UK's launch site in Woomera, Australia, with a British first stage, a French second stage, a German third stage, an Italian satellite, Dutch telemetry and Belgian ground systems. It was pretty much a failure mainly due to disfunctional cooperation between the various space agencies.

ESA is created in 1975. At the time, the UK's contribution is mostly in satellites and Germany concentrates on the Spacelab module that will fly on the Shuttle. However, France is the main contributor to the Ariane launcher program with CNES and French corporations building most of the hardware.

The first Ariane 1 rocket was launched from Kourou in 1979, and became the first European launcher capable of putting satellites into GEO orbit. Ariane 2, Ariane 3 and Ariane 4 improved on the design in 1984, 1987, and 1988.

Ariane 5 came later, but was more of a clean-sheet ESA design, which is probably off-topic for this post...

Edited March 7, 2014 by Nibb31

[Nibb31]

To our ever lasting shame the United Kingdom is the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned a satellite launch capability.

What could have been :-(

They didn't abandon it. They transferred it to ESA, to which the UK is one of the major contributors.

[Nemrav]

that is quite interesting nib, now I can vaguely remember the asterix name, probly from a 15min documentary on the comic now being revived by a new author.

now that we have 3 space programs, i'l edit this post to keep track of the articles that have been made :

Hungary : jmiki8

Canada : Nemrav

France : Nibb31

UK :

China :

Italy :

Japan :

India :

Germany :

countries to be added to this list ....

Edited March 7, 2014 by Nemrav

[Bigcheecho]

You're forgetting somebody.

[Kryten]

They didn't abandon it. They transferred it to ESA, to which the UK is one of the major contributors.

Not to the rocket capability. We aren't even an Arianespace shareholder.

You're forgetting somebody.

And somebody else, with a much larger program.

[AlexinTokyo]

Japan: JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

Off the top of my head, some of their recent missions.

IKAROS - world's first successful solar-sail ship

Hayabusa - world's first successful asteroid sample-return mission

Kibo - Science module (JEM) of the ISS. IIRC the largest module currently.

Of course, they've also had some pretty Kerbalesque failures with the H-II rocket program - I'll have to see if I can find any videos of them.

[Nibb31]

Not to the rocket capability. We aren't even an Arianespace shareholder.

And somebody else, with a much larger program.

Well, the UK is still part of ESA. I didn't mention it, but one of the reasons for the failure of Europa was because of the UK's insistance to use the Black Streak first stage, which simply wasn't up to the task of putting large payloads into a useful orbit. There were also arguments about whether the European launch site should be Woomera or Kourou, and the UK withdrew from the project when the French singlehandedly invested in Kourou.

BAE Systems severed its ties with Airbus Group, which owns 30% of Arianespace, but the UK still contributes nearly 10% of ESA's budget. I'd love to see the UK contribute more, and therefore get substantially more out of the deal. Each country has its own specialty in ESA (France does rockets, Italy does pressurized habs, Germany does ATV, etc...) and one area of expertise where ESA is lagging behind is manned spaceflight systems. It would be great to see the UK take the lead in that area.