Experimental Blog # 147

Quotations and notes from "Round About the Earth" - Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit by Joyce E. Chaplin

"Satellites were indeed the easiest way for nations to enter the space age, ... France{November 1965}, Japan{February 1970}, and China{April 1970} became the third, fourth, and fifth nations to put satellites in orbit." Post-colonial nations also put up satellites: India{briefly functioning in April 1975}, Indonesia{1976}, the Arab League{1985}, and Pakistan{1990}.

"Apollo 17 delivered .. the last person, so far, to have strolled the lunar surface. This expedition of 1972, the longest Moon stay, lasted 75 hours, about 11 percent of the 655.73 hours that it takes for the Moon to circle the planet."

"By 2012, over five hundred people had gone into space."
"The USSR established nine orbital outposts between 1971 and 1982. .. America's Skylab orbited from 1973 to 1979, .. A subsequent Russian station, Mir, orbited for fifteen years, a total of 86,000 times around the world, .. from 1986 to 2001. .. Finally, there is the world's current extraterrestrial outpost, the International Space Station{ISS}, first orbited in 1998, .."

At 569 kilometers above Earth, and higher, are the 'robotic emissaries'. "By the end of 2007, close to nine hundred satellites were in orbit, operated by authorities in over forty different countries."

Of course the earlier parts of the book were very interesting too.