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As any 6-year-old boy will tell you, the coolest things in life are giant machines and outer space.
Even for the rest of us, the giant machines that travel through space are fascinating if we stop to think about it. There is a certain thrill in knowing that some craft has been propelled beyond the confines of our planet. For the last 70 or so years, we've shot many machines into the vast and final frontier, carrying scientific instruments, Earth-observing satellites, and extraordinary men and women to inspect, explore, and redefine our world and the universe beyond.
Most of these machines never return home. But those that do come back always find their way to a museum to be a source of amazement and inspiration for the public.
Here, Wired takes a look at some of the biggest, farthest-traveling, and most impressive machines designed and launched during the Space Age. As usual, we can only highlight a few of the great ones and are sure you'll let us know what we missed in the comments.
Above:
The first photo of Earth taken from space. U.S. Army
Though a weapon of combat, the V-2 found a new and much better purpose after World War II: carrying scientific instruments to the upper reaches of the atmosphere to provide our first data about space. From 1946 to 1951, researchers at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico sent about 80 experiments more than 160 kilometers above the Earth. They returned valuable information about solar radiation, the ionosphere, and the upper atmosphere.
The White Sands operation accomplished some awesome firsts in spaceflight. One spacecraft recorded the first video ever taken of the Earth from space. Another carried a canister of fruit flies and various seeds that were safely parachuted back to the ground. Later rockets carried mice and rhesus monkeys to space (some of which survived but many of which, unfortunately, did not). Still, the information gained from the V-2 sounding rocket tests was incalculably valuable and set up many fields of study for later space scientists.
Image: Air Research and Development Command/U.S. Navy
V-2 sounding rockets
When aliens finally show up and ask humans how we got into the whole spaceflight business, expect there to be some shoe-gazing and uncomfortable shuffling as we cough out something about the Germans. Truth is, the first man-made object to get to space, the V-2 rocket, was created by the Nazi regime and used to kill innocent civilians in Belgium, England, France and elsewhere.The first photo of Earth taken from space. U.S. Army
Though a weapon of combat, the V-2 found a new and much better purpose after World War II: carrying scientific instruments to the upper reaches of the atmosphere to provide our first data about space. From 1946 to 1951, researchers at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico sent about 80 experiments more than 160 kilometers above the Earth. They returned valuable information about solar radiation, the ionosphere, and the upper atmosphere.
The White Sands operation accomplished some awesome firsts in spaceflight. One spacecraft recorded the first video ever taken of the Earth from space. Another carried a canister of fruit flies and various seeds that were safely parachuted back to the ground. Later rockets carried mice and rhesus monkeys to space (some of which survived but many of which, unfortunately, did not). Still, the information gained from the V-2 sounding rocket tests was incalculably valuable and set up many fields of study for later space scientists.
Image: Air Research and Development Command/U.S. Navy
