Twelve Years

Just twelve years separated the launch of Sputnik 1 and the Apollo 11 moon landing.  Based on that rate of development, some then speculated that first manned mission to Mars was only about the same distance off - but instead of a Mars mission in 1981, there was the space shuttle.  Another dozen years later, in 1993, and the big news in space was the cancellation of the Space Station Freedom project and its replacement with the International Space Station project.  A dozen years after that, in 2005, and the highlights of the American manned space program were the return to flight for the shuttle program and the fifth anniversary of the ISS being regularly manned.  And next year will mark another twelve years - a total of 48 years since Apollo 11, and 45 years since the last manned mission to the moon, in 1972, and in those 45 years, no one has been beyond low earth orbit.