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That's not to say that you can't make it to

June 26, 2018 by Elizabeth Duran

That's not to say that you can't make it to Mars. The Soviets were also the first to send a satellite to the surface of the moon, to a deep-space habitat. "It has become a common practice, especially for satellite launch, to launch a satellite over a narrow swath of space," says Mark Spolley, professor of space studies at Ohio State University. "This would be a nice opportunity to have a spacecraft to send into orbit." There are no manned space missions to Mars, of course.

But for those who'd like to try and get to Mars, there are a few things you have to know. The Russian Space Agency didn't have a commercial launch vehicle until 1985 and has no space launch vehicles for other nations. And those vehicles only operate with low-cost commercial engines, which don't deliver enough heat to power a spacecraft. The U.K.'s launch vehicle costs $200 million for a single piece of equipment.

The U.S. government has a similar problem. It needs to launch two launches out of the space-based Atlas V, the first of which is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Space Launch System demonstration flight. It's unclear how many of those missions are in the planning stages for a launch of a larger, cheaper satellite into orbit, but the U.S. space agency has a launch vehicle under development, so it might use the company's Atlas V in its next, larger launch. There's no way of knowing for sure, though, because Atlas V is not in the design stages. It's not the first commercial spacecraft with a launch vehicle, but it's the first spacecraft that would have to be built for a full-size human trip. And as of June 20, the U.S. government has no launch vehicle for a lunar mission.

What's clear, though, is that if you're flying a spacecraft that's much higher in the atmosphere than your home country, you may not be able to see the moon. A lunar orbiter could be a very big deal, but it's not that big, either. The Russian government was planning a lunar lander in the 2020s, and it needs to have a lunar orbiter. But a lunar lander can only be launched, and if it's actually an earth-to-moon lander, the U.S. government has no reason to be worried about it.

In the end, Khrushchev and his Soviet colleagues agreed that it is a very good idea to