Crewed spaceflight

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union made the first trip to space and back. Everything gets much harder when people are aboard. You must keep air and water to breathe, the right temperature and the right pressure, and you need a system that can quickly pull away just the part with people in it if the rocket has trouble.

That is why flights with people are far more expensive and take much longer to prepare than flights with cargo only. In the past only national space agencies did it, but since 2020, spacecraft built by private companies also carry astronauts to the International Space Station. People who are not career astronauts have also begun to go by paying for the trip.

It is the difference between sending a parcel and sending a person. A parcel can be shaken a little, but if you want to carry a person, you need seat belts, airbags and emergency exits too.

Plans to send people to the Moon and Mars are often delayed mostly because of safety checks. That is also why test flights with no people on board come first.