Well...
As everyone is quite sleepy due to the conjunction I thought about throwing a contest, we all know how we love a good fight...

On our national tv it has started a format that those in UK should know because it came from there, originally known as "The Great Bretons", here has gained the "Os Grandes Portugueses" title.
The objective is to choose the figure, alive or dead, that, from it's achievements you consider the most important...It was hard to decide but I've choosen Henry the Navigator, but Dom Afonso Henriques, Magalhães, Pessoa, Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira, Camões and Bartolomeu Dias made me think a lot...

We could do that here during this limbo days...
To vote on the one we consider the most important person on the quest for space knowledge.
To spice things a bit and avoid the hard task of choosing between this one or that one we have the right to choose five figures and vote them from 1 to 5 according to the importance we give them.
If anyone wants to add some more rules or ideas feel free to do so...

So, here goes my selection:

Carl Sagan - 1
Von Braun - 2
Korolev - 3
Galileo Galilei - 4
Yuri Gagarin - 5

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Tsiolkovsky - 1
Goddard - 2
The "Verein für Raumshiffahrt" - 3
...Or is that cheating? But it's hard to pick between, say, Ley, Hohmann, Sanger and Oberth, for example. Not sure of von Braun. Too many unanswered and unanswerable questions there. So at number #4 it has to be:
Korolev - 4
Michael Minovitch & Gary Flandro - 5

Honorable mention to Russell Ohls and his work on semiconductors and solar cells at Bell labs, without whom, etc...

Andy

you forgot some:

1 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
2 Robbert Goddard
3 Hermann Oberth

Here is my vote :
Icare (idea & dream)
Tsiolkovsky (theory)
Korolev (workhorse launcher)
Armstrong (First on another planet)
Carl Sagan (enthusiasm and leading)


I'd like to mention Albert Ducrocq (writer, journalists and much more) who understood it all and was my intellectual master.

My 5 picks.

1. Carl Sagan

I own the Cosmos DVD box set and I've watched it 3 times since I've brought in December 2003.
Favourite episodes are 11 and 13!

Note: Episode 11 contains a wonderful low spanning shot of the now extinct WTC towers in New York.
At the end on Episode 11, it concludes with a very worthy message. And all this was before 9/11!

2. Von Braun

Contribution to rocket design and helped to put man on the moon. I 'll forgive him for his Nazi past for this!

3. Seebeck (a scientist in the 19th century)

He discovered the "Seebeck" effect. This allowed the development of RTG's so we could see the outer solar system up close!

4. The Wright Brothers

They invented human powered flight. Enough said!

5. Albert Einstein. He's TIME's "Man Of The Century" for agood reason!

The moon is a planet now?

*ducks and runs from thread*

1. Carl Sagan.
2. John F Kennedy (created the space race ).
3. Galileo.
4. Von Braun.
5. Patrick Moore (Sky At Night ).

Gentlemen...You are forgetting the votes...
Maybe I did not explained myself very well...Give points, 1 to 5.
At the end we'll see who's the favourite...

To vote, follow the model below:

I read your "format" as being #1 = most important too, that's the way it's usually done. I think you're wanting a kind of Eurovision Song Contest vote...

Okay, well, I'm game.

Good evening Portugal... greetings from the beautiful Lake District in Cumbria, in the United Kingdom. Thank you for putting on a wonderful show tonight! (pause for insincere cheesy "Yes, yes, get on with it you scene-stealing foreigner..." grin from presenters...) Here are the votes from the Kendal jury...

Chesley Bonestell (space artist, who inspired a whole generation to reach for the planets): one point (un point)

Gene Rodenberry (TV series maker, who inspired the following generation, and every other since, including countless astronauts, engineers and scientists, to reach not just for the planets but for the stars ): two points (deux points)

Carl Sagan (legend... Earth's first and finest interstellar ambassador): three points (troi points)

Neil Armstrong (US astronaut, first man on the Moon... you've maybe heard of him...): four points (quatre points)

... and finally...

Yuri Gagarin (first human being to voluntarily sit on top of a stack of high explosives and let other people sat safely in bunkers miles away set them off beneath him and hope he went "up" and not "out"): five points (cinq points)

This concludes the voting of the Kendal jury...



( With honourable mentions to:

* Sally Ride - first US woman in space
* Christa McAuliffe - first teacher in space (huge inspiration to me personally, as I do Outreach work in schools)
* John "If you can build it I can fly it!" Young
* Mike Foale - UK-born astronaut who followed his dream and didn't let the fact that the British Governments of every age are so short-sighted and stoopid that they simply Don't Get how important space exploration is. )

I knew some of you europeans would come up with that 'un point' talk...
Oh man...You all on the other side of the Atlantic don't know what you're missing when we're talking about Eurovision...

I see Gagarin taking the lead...

The first men who made right directions that helped the man to conquer the space:

1. Issac Newton with its law of "Principia...." Without it, nobody won't go to anywhere.

2. Goddard, the father of rockets

3. Yurin Gagarin for his bravery to sit on the most explosive base that a Man has ever sit .

4. Von Braun . Admirable genius who was able to make the biggest toy that worked great!

5. Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Adrin for their great mind and physical versatility to adapt to the other worlds.

Rodolfo

P.D. I must admit that I am still ignorant in biographes part of space exploration. I must have forgotten to many ilustrated persons!

Because you forgot them...

1. Hugo Gernsback, for making the concept of space travel (and much besides) accessible to the masses
2. Jules Verne, for inspiring Goddard, Von Braun, and millions of others, far into the 20th century
3. John Glenn, for being a reasonably decent excuse for a human being
4. Johannes Kepler, both for his famous laws and being the first person in post-medieval times to "go to the Moon"
5. Laika the dog, first martyr to spaceflight

Here we go:

Joshua LEDERBERG 1
Max FAGET 2
John HOUBOLT 3
Sergeï KOROLEV 4
Wernher von BRAUN 5

How could Willy Ley have been forgotten so fast? And how about Chesley Bonestell?

I would argue that their collaborative works (along with Von Braun) were THE seminal influence that literally launched the US space program. Laying down the technical framework for spaceflight required major capital investment, and that would never have happened without public awareness and support.

If Sergeï KOROLEV and Wernher von BRAUN some of your choices, then Bernard Schiever has to be included.

In actually, the sum of the responsibilites would be something like this:
Korolev = Von Braun + Schiever

Von Braun didn't do spacecraft or ICBMs

(cough) my post (cough)

Perhaps we should add Nikita Khrushchev. If he hadn't given Korolev the go-ahead there would never have been a space-race.

tty

Oh yes, that was my first thought Thanks Stu to say it all.



BTW, once we have elected the ONE individual...his country will have to organize next year competition
I agree, some have just NO idea of what they're missing

Then you'll have to add his Mother & Father

I would say that some are just lucky to have no idea of what they're missing.

Oh yes, that was definitively a second degree quote