Let’s compare some of the passenger carrying spacecraft now in use or forthcoming. These are mostly competing for the job of shuttling people in and out of space stations.

Only two older craft survive from the pre-commercial era: Russia’s venerable Soyuz and its Chinese imitator/upgrade, Shenzhou, which are both flying about twice a year. Several new commercial craft in various stages of readiness are covered, all from American companies: the Dragon (now the busiest spacecraft with about four flights a year), the Starliner (which has become a major embarrassment to Boeing), the Dream Chaser (which now might never get upgraded for human flight as they had hoped), the passenger and lunar versions of Starship (which are always years further away than SpaceX would like us to believe they are), and the other lunar landing craft commissioned by the Artemis program, Blue Moon (which currently exists only as a small non-reusable pathfinder). The European project to build a commercial capsule called Nyx is briefly described in the Dream Chaser article, until such time as it is real enough to get its own.

There are also new craft coming from several governments, of which only the USA’s Orion is complete. Others in the works include China’s Mengzhou (to be accompanied later by the Lanyue lunar lander), India’s Gaganyaan (which may be close to a test launch), and Russia’s Orel (which I would bet is now stalled indefinitely). Finally, we add a brief run-through of uncrewed cargo spacecraft, plus a couple of odd cases like the X-37B military spaceplane.

Some articles give two dates in the heading, these being the dates of the first uncrewed test launch and the first crewed flight. If either of these has not happened yet, a future year with a question mark may indicate when they hope to accomplish it.

I include pictures, but they are usually artists’ renders rather than photographs, as it’s hard to take a decent looking photo that shows all parts when it’s actually up in space. Only for the Soyuz did I find a good photo in orbit.

A notable absence from this section is whatever capsule Blue Origin might put on top of the New Glenn. Apparently they are just restarting work on it these days. Presumably it will be larger than anything else here except the Starship, and able to seat many people. Even their suborbital New Shepard capsule has 15 cubic meters of interior space and seats six, with large windows. It lands in dirt like a Soyuz, with parachutes and a brief dab of rocket braking just before touchdown, so perhaps the Glenn capsule would do likewise.