A Brief History of Space Habitats Where Humans Have Lived

Take a tour through all the space stations that have orbited Earth.

The International Space Station is a thing of splendor, though it's easy to forget it was far from the first orbital laboratory. In fact, the history stretches back to 1971 with Salyut 1 (or 1969, depending on who you ask about Soyuz 4 and 5). Since then there have been a series of other stations, including Skylab, Mir, and Tiangong 3.

Gizmodo put together this video history of everything that's been launched into orbit and inhabited, though it also includes the Genesis I and II, which have never received crews, but instead tested the viability of Bigelow Aerospace's designs. (By that extension, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory could have been included, although it was not a full-scale model.)

There are, of course, more space stations to come, including Bigelow's move toward a massive orbiting space station, Russia's plan to leave the ISS and form its own station, and a larger Chinese space station slated for some time in the 2020s. NASA even mulled putting a space station near L2 orbit on the far side of the Moon, though there hasn't been much chatter since. In other words, there are big plans in the future for space stations. 

Source: Sploid

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