Pioneers Who Became Our Heroes and Legends

March 23, 1961

Valentin Bondarenko

Soviet cosmonaut trainee, age 24

Died in a fire during a pressure-chamber endurance test three weeks before Gagarin flew. His death was kept secret for twenty-five years, so nobody outside the program could learn from it. The oxygen-rich cabin that killed him would kill three more men in Florida six years later.

What it cost: His life, and the lesson that could have saved others if anyone had been allowed to hear it.

Sources: Wikipedia · James Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters (1988)

April 24, 1967

Vladimir Komarov

Soyuz 1

Flew the first Soyuz knowing it had been rushed and had failed its uncrewed tests. In orbit a solar panel failed to open, then the attitude control, then the parachute. He came down alone. The Soyuz that flies today, still, is the one that was fixed because of him.

What it cost: His life, on a ship he knew was not ready.

Sources: Wikipedia · Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo, NASA SP-2000-4408

November 15, 1967

Michael J. Adams

X-15 Flight 191

Air Force test pilot, the eighth man to fly high enough to earn astronaut wings. Lost control during reentry from fifty miles up and the aircraft broke apart. The X-15 program that killed him is where most of what we know about flying a winged vehicle back from the edge of space was learned.

What it cost: His life, at the edge of the atmosphere, in a program that flew a hundred and ninety-nine times.

Sources: Wikipedia · Milton Thompson, At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program (1992)

1857–1935

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Schoolteacher, Kaluga, Russia

Nearly deaf, self-taught, working in a provincial schoolhouse, he wrote the rocket equation in 1903 — before anybody had flown an airplane — and then worked out multistage rockets, liquid fuel, orbital stations, and airlocks on paper, for nobody, because nobody was asking. “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.” He never saw a rocket fly.

What it cost: A lifetime of work with no audience and no proof he would ever be right.

Sources: Wikipedia · Tsiolkovsky, The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (1903)

1882–1945

Robert Goddard

Physicist, Worcester, Massachusetts

Flew the first liquid-fuel rocket from his aunt's farm in 1926. The New York Times mocked him in print for not knowing that rockets could not work in a vacuum, and he spent the rest of his life working mostly alone in the New Mexico desert on money from Charles Lindbergh and the Guggenheims. The Times printed a correction in 1969, the day after Apollo 11 launched.

What it cost: Twenty years of public ridicule for being right.

Sources: Wikipedia · Goddard, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, Smithsonian, 1919

1894–1989

Hermann Oberth

Physicist, Transylvania and Germany

His doctoral thesis on rockets was rejected as fantasy, so he published it himself in 1923. That book is what a teenage Wernher von Braun read, and what the German rocket clubs of the twenties were built around. He lived to watch the Moon landing on television, in the front row at the Cape.

What it cost: A rejected thesis and a career spent being the man the universities would not take seriously.

Sources: Wikipedia · Oberth, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923)

1907–1966

Sergei Korolev

Chief Designer of the Soviet space program

Arrested in the purges of 1938, beaten, and sent to a Siberian gold mine, where he lost his teeth and nearly his life. Released to design rockets, he put the first satellite, the first animal, the first man, and the first woman into orbit, and his name was a state secret until the day he died. The Soviet Union announced who he was in his obituary.

What it cost: Six years in the camps, then a lifetime of the world's greatest accomplishments credited to nobody.

Sources: Wikipedia · James Harford, Korolev (1997)

1912–1977

Wernher von Braun

Rocket engineer, Germany and the United States

Built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for Kennedy, and the second does not cancel the first. He is on this list because the rocket that carried people to the Moon exists because he spent forty years wanting to build it, drawing it for magazine readers in the fifties when nobody in government was interested, and then delivering it on time.

What it cost: A lifetime of arguing for a destination, and a legacy that will always carry an asterisk.

Sources: Wikipedia · Michael Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (2007)

1927–1992

Gerard K. O'Neill

Princeton physicist

Asked his students in 1969 whether a planet's surface was really the right place for an expanding civilization, and worked out the answer: no. The rotating habitats, the mass drivers, the lunar materials, the sunlight-powered economy in free space — the whole framework this magazine works inside — is his. He spent the last twenty years of his life trying to get anyone in power to listen.

What it cost: Two decades and his reputation as a serious physicist, spent on a future that has still not been funded.

Sources: Wikipedia · O’Neill, The High Frontier (1976)

1934–1996

Carl Sagan

Astronomer, Cornell

Led the small group that decided, in a matter of months in 1977, what to say to anyone who might one day find a spacecraft from Earth, and put two gold records on the Voyagers that are now farther from home than anything else people have made. He spent the rest of his life explaining the universe to people who had been told it was not for them.

What it cost: The respect of colleagues who thought a scientist should not be on television. He did it anyway.

A Message in a Bottle, Thrown Hard →

Sources: Wikipedia · Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)

Biosphere 2, 1984–1994

Ed Bass

Texas financier and philanthropist

Put up on the order of a hundred and fifty million dollars of his own money to build a sealed world nobody had built before, on a schedule no government program would have approved, for a return of nothing but knowledge. The facility is still doing science that cannot be done anywhere else.

What it cost: His own money, and a decade as the punchline for a project that turned out to be foundation.

The Box Nobody Tested →

Sources: Wikipedia · Rebecca Reider, Dreaming the Biosphere (2009)

SpaceX, founded 2002

Elon Musk

Founder of SpaceX

Started a rocket company when the received wisdom was that private companies do not build orbital launchers. Three failures in a row nearly ended it; the fourth flight reached orbit in 2008 with the last of the money. The company then made the first stage of an orbital rocket land itself and fly again, and the price of getting a kilogram to orbit dropped further than it had in the previous forty years put together. He has said in public, for twenty years, that the point is Mars. Every plan in this magazine that involves launching something is cheaper because of him.

What it cost: Nearly all of the money he had, put in when everyone told him not to, and a life spent being told the goal is ridiculous.

A Message in a Bottle, Thrown Hard →

Sources: Wikipedia · Eric Berger, Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX (2021)

April 12, 1961

Yuri Gagarin

Vostok 1

The first human being to leave the planet, one orbit, one hundred and eight minutes, in a capsule he could not steer, ejecting to land by parachute because the ship could not land softly with a man in it. Nobody knew whether a person could think, or swallow, or survive in orbit. He found out.

What it cost: He went first, into a question with no answer yet.

Sources: Wikipedia · Gagarin, Road to the Stars (1961)

May 5, 1961

Alan Shepard

Freedom 7

Sat on top of a Redstone for four hours of holds and finally said “let's light this candle.” Fifteen minutes, a hundred and sixteen miles up. Grounded for years by an inner-ear disease, had it fixed, and walked on the Moon at forty-seven on Apollo 14.

What it cost: A decade fighting to get back in the seat.

Sources: Wikipedia · Shepard and Slayton, Moon Shot (1994)

February 20, 1962

John Glenn

Friendship 7

First American in orbit, three times around, with a false warning light telling the ground his heat shield was loose. Flew again at seventy-seven on the Shuttle, the oldest person to go to space, so doctors could study what it does to an old man's body.

What it cost: Two rides, thirty-six years apart, both of them for the data.

Sources: Wikipedia · Glenn, John Glenn: A Memoir (1999)

1961–1963

The Mercury Seven

Six flights, one man each, and the one who never got to go

Seven military test pilots picked in 1959 to sit on top of a converted missile and find out whether a man could work in space at all. All seven are gone now. The ones marked † are gone; the year is when we lost them.

1. Freedom 7 May 1961 — Alan Shepard † 1998. fifteen minutes, the first American in space.
2. Liberty Bell 7 July 1961 — Gus Grissom † 1967. the hatch blew and the capsule sank; he did not.
3. Friendship 7 February 1962 — John Glenn † 2016. first American in orbit, three times around.
4. Aurora 7 May 1962 — Scott Carpenter † 2013. overshot the landing by 250 miles and floated for three hours.
5. Sigma 7 October 1962 — Wally Schirra † 2007. the textbook flight, six orbits.
6. Faith 9 May 1963 — Gordon Cooper † 2004. thirty-four hours, and flew the reentry by hand when the electrics failed.
7. Grounded 1962 — Deke Slayton † 1993. pulled off Mercury for a heart murmur, ran the astronaut office for a decade, finally flew in 1975.

What it cost: Riding rockets that were blowing up on the pad the year before, with nothing between them and the outcome but a hand controller.

Sources: Wikipedia, Mercury Seven · Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979) · Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, NASA SP-4201

June 16, 1963

Valentina Tereshkova

Vostok 6

A textile worker and amateur parachutist, chosen from four hundred applicants, she flew forty-eight orbits alone — more time in space than every American astronaut to that point put together. The next woman would not fly for nineteen years.

What it cost: Three days alone in orbit, then two decades of being the only one.

Sources: Wikipedia · Bettyann Kevles, Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space (2003)

March 18, 1965

Alexei Leonov

Voskhod 2

First person to step outside a spacecraft. His suit ballooned in the vacuum until he could not fit back through the airlock, and he bled air out of it by hand, nearly blacking out, to get home. He later commanded the Soviet half of Apollo-Soyuz and painted what he had seen for the rest of his life.

What it cost: Twelve minutes outside, and the ten of them spent deciding whether he would get back in.

Sources: Wikipedia · Leonov and Scott, Two Sides of the Moon (2004)

1965–1966

The sixteen who flew Gemini

Ten flights in twenty months, and everything Apollo needed to know

Gemini is the program nobody remembers, and it is where rendezvous, docking, spacewalking, and two-week endurance were all worked out. Most of these men flew again on Apollo. Fourteen of the sixteen have died. The ones marked † are gone; the year is when we lost them.

1. Gemini 3 March 1965 — Gus Grissom † 1967, John Young † 2018. first two-man flight.
2. Gemini 4 June 1965 — Jim McDivitt † 2022, Ed White † 1967. first American spacewalk.
3. Gemini 5 August 1965 — Gordon Cooper † 2004, Pete Conrad † 1999. eight days, long enough for the Moon.
4. Gemini 7 December 1965 — Frank Borman † 2023, Jim Lovell † 2025. fourteen days in a space the size of a phone booth.
5. Gemini 6A December 1965 — Wally Schirra † 2007, Tom Stafford † 2024. first rendezvous, to within a foot of Gemini 7.
6. Gemini 8 March 1966 — Neil Armstrong † 2012, Dave Scott. first docking, then a stuck thruster and a tumble that nearly killed them.
7. Gemini 9A June 1966 — Tom Stafford † 2024, Gene Cernan † 2017. flown by the backup crew after Elliot See and Charles Bassett died in a T-38 crash on the way to the factory.
8. Gemini 10 July 1966 — John Young † 2018, Michael Collins † 2021. two dockings, two spacewalks.
9. Gemini 11 September 1966 — Pete Conrad † 1999, Dick Gordon † 2017. docked on the first orbit, highest anyone had flown.
10. Gemini 12 November 1966 — Jim Lovell † 2025, Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin finally showed a spacewalk could be done without exhausting the man.

What it cost: Two of the men assigned to these flights, See and Bassett, never got to fly them. Four astronauts of this era died in training jets: Theodore Freeman in 1964, See and Bassett in 1966, and Clifton Williams in 1967.

Sources: Wikipedia, Project Gemini · Hacker and Grimwood, On the Shoulders of Titans, NASA SP-4203

July 20, 1969

The crew of Apollo 11

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins

Went to the Moon with a computer that overloaded on the way down and a landing site full of boulders, and landed with about twenty seconds of fuel. Collins circled alone on the far side, out of contact with everyone alive, and later said he did not feel lonely. The three of them came home to a world that has never quite been the same size since.

What it cost: The odds Armstrong gave the landing: fifty-fifty. They went anyway.

Sources: Wikipedia · Aldrin, Magnificent Desolation (2009) · my own account: The Question I Asked Buzz Aldrin

1968–1972

The twenty-nine who flew Apollo

Eleven crews, twenty-four of them to the Moon, twelve of them onto it

Every one of them belongs on this page, not just the three whose names everybody knows. Twenty-four men have left Earth orbit and gone to the Moon; every one of them was on one of these crews. Twenty-three of the twenty-nine have died. The ones marked † are gone; the year is when we lost them.

1. Apollo 7 October 1968 — Wally Schirra † 2007, Donn Eisele † 1987, Walter Cunningham † 2023. Earth orbit, the first flight after the fire.
2. Apollo 8 December 1968 — Frank Borman † 2023, Jim Lovell † 2025, Bill Anders † 2024. first humans to leave Earth orbit and circle the Moon.
3. Apollo 9 March 1969 — Jim McDivitt † 2022, Dave Scott, Rusty Schweickart. first flight of the lunar module, Earth orbit.
4. Apollo 10 May 1969 — Tom Stafford † 2024, John Young † 2018, Gene Cernan † 2017. the dress rehearsal, to within nine miles of the surface.
5. Apollo 11 July 1969 — Neil Armstrong † 2012, Michael Collins † 2021, Buzz Aldrin. first landing.
6. Apollo 12 November 1969 — Pete Conrad † 1999, Dick Gordon † 2017, Alan Bean † 2018. landed next to Surveyor 3.
7. Apollo 13 April 1970 — Jim Lovell † 2025, Jack Swigert † 1982, Fred Haise. the one that came home.
8. Apollo 14 February 1971 — Alan Shepard † 1998, Stuart Roosa † 1994, Edgar Mitchell † 2016. Fra Mauro.
9. Apollo 15 August 1971 — Dave Scott, Al Worden † 2020, Jim Irwin † 1991. first rover, Hadley Rille.
10. Apollo 16 April 1972 — John Young † 2018, Ken Mattingly † 2023, Charlie Duke. the lunar highlands.
11. Apollo 17 December 1972 — Gene Cernan † 2017, Ron Evans † 1990, Harrison Schmitt. the last landing, and the only geologist.

What it cost: Years of their lives in simulators and quarantine, a program that killed three of their friends before it flew, and for most of them, the rest of their lives being asked about eight days.

Sources: Wikipedia, List of Apollo astronauts · Chaikin, A Man on the Moon (1994)

September 26, 1991 – September 26, 1993

The Biosphere 2 crew

Abigail Alling, Linda Leigh, Taber MacCallum, Mark Nelson, Jane Poynter, Sally Silverstone, Mark Van Thillo, and Roy Walford

Eight people walked into three acres of glass in the Arizona desert, closed the door, and stayed two years. They grew about eighty percent of what they ate and were hungry for all of it. For sixteen months they breathed air thinner than a mountaintop's while the oxygen drained into the building's own concrete. They came out the same door on the day they said they would. Everything anybody now knows about keeping people alive in a sealed world starts with what they went through.

What it cost: Two years of their lives, ten to twenty percent of their body weight, and friendships that in some cases never came back.

The Box Nobody Tested →

Sources: Wikipedia · Jane Poynter, The Human Experiment (2006) · The Box Nobody Tested

1918–2020

Katherine Johnson

Mathematician, NASA Langley

Calculated the trajectory for Shepard's flight by hand, and when the first computers came in, John Glenn refused to fly until she had personally checked their numbers. She did the math for Apollo 11's landing and for getting Apollo 13 home, in a building where she was not, for years, allowed to use the same restroom as the engineers.

What it cost: A career of doing the work while the credit went to the building.

Sources: Wikipedia · Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures (2016)

Apollo, 1960s

Margaret Hamilton

Director of software engineering, MIT Instrumentation Laboratory

Led the team that wrote the flight software for the Apollo guidance computer. Her insistence on error handling that engineers thought unnecessary is why the computer, overloaded three minutes before the first Moon landing, threw out the low-priority work and kept flying instead of crashing. There was no such thing as software engineering when she started. She named it.

What it cost: Years of being told the failures she was designing for would never happen.

Sources: Wikipedia · David Mindell, Digital Apollo (2008)

Mercury through Shuttle

Gene Kranz and the flight controllers

Mission Control, Houston

The people in the windowless room with the headsets, who wrote the mission rules, ran the simulations until the crews hated them, and brought Apollo 13 home with a slide rule and a stack of procedures nobody had ever needed before. Kranz's rule after the Apollo 1 fire: from now on we are tough and competent, and we will never again be careless.

What it cost: Every mission, every shift, the weight of being the one who says go.

Sources: Wikipedia · Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option (2000)

Apollo, 1960s

The seamstresses of ILC Dover

Frederica, Delaware

The Apollo spacesuit was twenty-one layers, hand-sewn to a tolerance of a sixty-fourth of an inch, by women who had been making bras and girdles for Playtex. There was no needle-through-the-fabric allowed — a single wrong stitch could kill a man on the Moon — and they did it, for every suit, for every crew, and not one suit ever failed.

What it cost: Years of precision work for people whose names were never on the suits.

Sources: Wikipedia · Nicholas de Monchaux, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (2011)