Ranking Humanity’s Greatest Space Missions

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I’ve been surviving on cold brew and adrenaline for the past week. Between tracking the latest American lunar flyby for the Artemis mission and watching China successfully dock their newest crewed Shenzhou spacecraft, my sleep schedule is completely wrecked. But man, what a time to be a space nerd. Space Race 2.0 is officially happening right above our heads.

I grew up in Florida, close enough to the Cape to feel the rumble of the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters rattling my bedroom windows. That feeling never really leaves you. Watching NASA and the CNSA (China National Space Administration) push the boundaries of orbital mechanics right now got me feeling deeply nostalgic about how we actually got here. So, to procrastinate on actual work, I started messing around with the tier list maker on this site to rank the greatest spaceflight milestones in space exploration history. History is messy, and my opinions are definitely biased by my childhood, but here is how my personal bracket shook out.

S-Tier Spaceflight Milestones: The Absolute Peak of Space Exploration

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing (1969)

• Look, I’m an American, so this was always going to be at the top.
• But objectively? Putting Neil and Buzz on the lunar surface with a guidance computer that had less processing power than a singing greeting card is insane.
• I have a framed transcript of the "1202 program alarm" on my desk just to remind myself what working under pressure actually looks like.

Voyager 1 Entering Interstellar Space (2012)

• It’s a 1970s satellite carrying a golden record of Chuck Berry music, and it is currently flying between the stars.
• Nothing else needs to be said.

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A-Tier Space Missions: Monumental Foundation Builders

NASA's Mars Rovers (Curiosity & Perseverance)

• I remember staying up until 2 AM to watch the JPL livestream of Curiosity’s "seven minutes of terror" in 2012. The fact that some engineers decided the best way to land a nuclear-powered, SUV-sized robot on Mars was to drop it from a rocket-powered hovercraft (the sky crane) sounds like a bad sci-fi movie.
• The fact that it actually worked twice is A-Tier magic.

The Tiangong Space Station (2022)

• You have to respect the raw engineering flex here.
• Watching the CNSA build, launch, and fully operationalize a multi-module space station entirely on their own over just a couple of years is a massive technical achievement.
• It definitely kicked Washington into high gear.

The James Webb Space Telescope (2021)

• I almost put this in S-Tier, but the decades of delays knocked it down a peg for me.
• Still, unfolding a tennis-court-sized beryllium mirror a million miles from Earth so we can look at the literal dawn of time is pretty cool.

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B-Tier Spacecraft: Beautiful Heartbreaks and Flawed Marvels

The Space Shuttle Program (1981-2011)

• This is where my heart and my brain fight.
• I was standing on the causeway for STS-135, the final flight of Atlantis.
• I cried when the main engines cut off. To me, the Shuttle is the most beautiful machine ever built.
• But as a grown-up aerospace fan, I have to admit it was a tragically flawed, incredibly dangerous system that never delivered on its promise of cheap, rapid reusability.
• It built the ISS and launched Hubble, but the cost in dollars and human lives was devastating.
• I can't put it any higher than B.

The Mir Space Station (1986-2001)

• The Soviet/Russian predecessor to the ISS.
• I have mad respect for the cosmonauts who lived on this thing, but by the late 90s, it was basically held together by duct tape, sheer willpower, and prayers.
• They survived a massive fire and a literal collision with a resupply ship.
• It’s B-Tier because it proved long-duration spaceflight was possible, but it also proved that zero-G mold and failing life support systems are the stuff of nightmares.

Hubble's Initial Launch (1990)

• Notice I said the initial launch, not the telescope itself.
• We spent billions of dollars and decades designing the ultimate eye in the sky, only to get it up there and realize someone messed up the mirror grinding by a fraction of a hair.
• It was near-sighted! The fact that NASA had to send astronauts up to give a billion-dollar satellite a pair of reading glasses is both embarrassing and wildly impressive.

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C-Tier Space Events: Overhyped Aerospace Achievements

Suborbital Billionaire Joyrides (2021-Present)

• Look, I’m all for expanding access to space, but watching billionaires ride suborbital rockets for 10 minutes of weightlessness before popping champagne on the landing pad doesn't exactly scream "giant leap for mankind."
• It’s cool aerospace engineering, but compared to the Tiangong space station construction or the Mars rovers, throwing rich guys above the Karman line feels like a glorified amusement park ride.

Skylab (1973-1979)

• NASA’s first crack at a space station.
• They basically hollowed out a Saturn V rocket stage and said, "Live in this."
• It got off to a terrible start when a micrometeoroid shield ripped off during launch, taking a solar panel with it.
• The astronauts had to rig up a makeshift parasol just to keep the station from boiling.
• It did some good science, but the fact that it eventually crashed back to Earth and rained debris over the Australian outback kind of docks it some serious points.

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D-Tier Space Disasters: Failed Missions and Engineering Errors

The Mars Climate Orbiter (1999)

• This one physically hurts to type.
• A $125 million spacecraft, designed to study the Martian atmosphere, burned up in the planet's orbit. Why?
• Because one engineering team at Lockheed Martin used English imperial units (pound-seconds) and the NASA JPL team used metric units (newton-seconds).
• A basic math conversion error destroyed a flagship mission. It is the ultimate facepalm in space exploration history.

The Buran Shuttle Program (1988)

• The Soviet Union’s answer to the NASA Space Shuttle.
• To be fair, it actually flew autonomously, which our shuttles couldn't do at the time.
• But it only flew into space once. The program was massively expensive, drained Soviet resources, and was ultimately abandoned after the collapse of the USSR.
• The heartbreaking finale? The only flown Buran orbiter was destroyed in 2002 when the hangar roof collapsed on it due to poor maintenance.
• A tragic waste of incredible engineering potential.

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Unranked Future Space Missions: The Artemis Program and Starship

The Artemis Mission (Crewed Landing)

• The uncrewed flybys are awesome, but I’m reserving judgment until we actually see boots kicking up regolith at the lunar south pole.
• If they pull it off, it shoots straight to S-Tier.

SpaceX Starship Orbital Transfer

• We know it can launch, but if they pull off ship-to-ship propellant transfer in orbit?
• That completely changes the math on getting to Mars.

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Create Your Own Spaceflight History Tier List

That’s my entirely subjective, highly Americanized take on the milestones of spaceflight. You probably disagree with me dumping the Shuttle into B-Tier, and someone is definitely going to yell at me for leaving Sputnik off the board entirely. Good. That's what the internet is for.

I highly recommend digging into the tier list maker on this site and building your own version. Drop your completed bracket in the comments—I want to see what you guys think the real pinnacle of human spaceflight is.

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