Re: tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Mike Findlay wrote:
> Nine sounded high to me and I checked we've only been six times.

Apollo 11 was the first one that actually landed on the moon, and Apollo 
17 was the last American mission at least (I know this because there's a 
horror movie coming up next year called Apollo 18, which supposedly tells 
the "true" story of why the moon landings were called off), plus, as you 
note, Apollo 13's mission had to be aborted -- so, yeah, there have been 
six *American* landings on the moon, at least.

Were there any Russian landings? ... Nope, appears not:

    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apollo_program

    In these six Apollo spaceflights, 12 men walked on the Moon. These are 
the only times humans have landed on another celestial body.

Ah, but apparently there were three *orbits* around the moon, in addition 
to the six *landings*.  Those orbital missions were Apollo 8 (the one with 
the famous Christmas broadcast; also the one that produced the first-ever 
photographs of an Earthrise, and of the entire Earth from space), Apollo 
10 (first manned flight of the Lunar Module around the moon) and ... I 
guess the 9th might be Apollo 13, which *did* fly around the dark side of 
the moon, if I remember the movie correctly.  (Apparently Apollo 9 was 
done to test the Lunar Module but didn't actually take it to the moon, 
while Apollo 13 is currently the only manned non-orbital lunar flight that 
has ever taken place -- but a lunar flight it is, apparently.)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Manned_missions

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