History of space flight has been very rich with accomplishments and milestones, but it appears that the world has reached a small bottleneck for technology in the area of space exploration. In addition, the lack of competition from any other country has slowed down the pace of innovation. With the Russian Space Program in shambles, as well as the whole country of Russia, the former USSR has not produced much useful technology lately. With a huge space station in the making, Russia is the only country that has not made the necessary parts for its completion, due to costly maintenance of their old space station, Mir, on which Russia and America have worked together on conducting experiments in the years after the USSR's break-up. With Mir's retirement, Russia now has the time and the resources to complete their part of the International Space Station which will accelerate space exploration.

Although most of the missions that have been launched have been important in their own ways, some missions just stand out, whether it was the first step on the Moon, or the first mission to Mars. NASA's first high profile program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space. It was the prelude to the later missions, and it gave NASA the necessary data to build better, and more comfortable ships for humans to stay in space for extended periods of time. The first launch of the Mercury program was the LJ-1 on August 21, 1959. At thirty-five minutes before launch, evacuation of the area had been proceeding on schedule. Suddenly, half an hour before launch-time, an explosive flash occurred. When the smoke cleared it was evident that only the capsule-and-tower combination had been launched, on a trajectory similar to an off-the-pad abort (http://www.ksc.nasa.gov, Mercury: LJ-1). The first mildly successful spacecraft launch occurred September 9, 1959. Although the BJ-1 ship experienced some problems, and the timing on some of the separation procedures was off, the capsule made it back to earth some seven hours after lift-off. The capsule orbited the earth for approximately thirteen minutes (Mercury: BJ-1). Mercury mission MA-5 was the first to carry live organisms into sub-orbit. Although Enos - a chimpanzee, was not a perfect substitute for a human, he served as a good test for the environmental controls of the capsule. He orbited the earth in total weightlessness for over three hours and upon landing was in perfect physical condition (Mercury: MA-5). On May 5, 1961, Freedom 7 was the first launch to carry humans into space. Alan B. Shepard, Jr. was the only crewmember, and the successful mission lasted for over 15 minutes (Mercury: MR-3). More manned flights from the Mercury series followed, highlighted by the Friendship 7, where on February 20, 1962, John Glenn was the first American in actual orbit, and he orbited the earth three times for a little under five hours (Mercury: MA-6). The last mission from the Mercury project came on May 15, 1963, where L. Gordon Cooper was in orbit in the Faith 7 for over a day. Total weightless time was over thirty-four hours, and the mission was celebrated and deemed more than successful (Mercury: MA-9). Gemini missions followed which built on the success of the Mercury flights, and basically followed the same outlines, except with a crew of two astronauts. The most monumental program in the history of the US came next, following the late President Ke

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2309
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)