About real manned space flight
Up to today the manned missions to the Moon from my point of view have been the only real manned space flight. I do not doubt the operation of the International Space Station (ISS) needs high abilities in orbital mechanics for docking at the station, the life support systems need to function flawlessly to keep the crew alive. But with “real space flight” I speak of the traveled distance away from Earth. Let me explain that in more detail:
The diameter of the Earth is about 12,700 km (in fact some 10 km more, but let’s keep it simple). The ISS orbits the Earth in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at a height of about 400 km. This is just 400 / 12,700 = 0,03 which means the ISS is just as high as 3 % of its diameter. (I work with rounded values but for showing the dimensions of what I want to explain it is good enough for sure.) That’s about just as if you would stay still at the entrance door of your home. Let’s assume when you enter your home you need to walk through a room, a floor and another room to reach the back door. If a room is 10 m long and the floor 2 m and we assume some thick walls, the journey from the entrance to the back door is about 25 m. Now let’s assume you walk away from your home as far as the ISS is away from home, away from Earth, the 3 %. Now, 3 % of 25 m is just 0.75 m, not a single complete meter! Even the private Polaris Dawn mission from September 2024, the highest manned space flight since NASA’s Apollo program, did not reach the distance from our home planet’s diameter. Polaris Dawn reached 1408 km height, about 11 % of the Earth’s diameter.
The Apollo missions 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, which means 9 missions, reached the Moon. The Moon’s average distance from Earth is 384,400 km which means in percentage of the Earth’s diameter these missions flew 384,400 km/ 12,700 = 30,27 (rounded 30), awesome 3,000 % of the Earth’s diameter. Coming back to the example of the distance from the entrance door to the back door this means 25 m * 3,000 % = 750 m. That’s not really far away but it might represent the maximum distance you will have from your home when you take a little walk.
Yes, I know, the ISS is in the height which takes more effort than going away without changing the level but remember: 0.75 m, you are even taller, your rooms are higher in your home. LEO needs a hell of technical effort to go there and to keep humas alive, that’s absolutely out of question and those who go there and those who enable us to go there to an amazing hell of a job. But it is far away from leaving our cradle. A more physical point is: Going into LEO is what takes most of the energy to get a mission started. Going to the Moon compared to this is just a little burn more compared to the lift from Earth of into orbit and there has been plenty of time from the manned Moon landings up to today to improve the live support for humans on longer space journeys.
You see, in space, we had just some little walks yet. For a really far journey there is much left to do, much left to develop, much room for curiosity and creativity. Why didn't we get it started yet?