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In order to characterize the human functioning dynamics in a given sector of human activities, we need to choose some counting scheme to quantify it. For this research we have applied the same approach already used some years ago to measure the expansion dynamics of the Portuguese during the so-called ‘Age of Discoveries’^1,2. Many historians and world system theorists now extend the dating of K-waves further into the past. Devezas and Modelski¹ and Nascimento and Devezas³ have shown that the expansion of the Portuguese maritime Empire during the 15^th and 16^th centuries has followed the typical unfolding of two entire K-waves, each of which supported by a given set of technological, organizational and political innovations. The quantifying schema used was to establish a count of Portuguese expeditions and campaigns, considered discretely and cumulatively, as a time-series. By expeditions was mean primarily exploratory and preparatory undertakings; campaigns by contrast referred to military, primarily naval, operations that included the capture of cities. This approach was coined as the measure of the ‘intensity of activity’ during the overall Portuguese world-wide enterprise.

In this work we have followed a similar approach considering the ‘intensity of activity’ of all space-related missions undertaken by several countries, counting discretely andcumulatively the launching of rockets (successful and not successful) with the most different purposes: exploring the upper atmosphere, placing objects in orbit, training manned space flight, exploring the moon or other solar system bodies, building a space station, or even sending objects outside the solar system. More than 7000 space launches in the last 80 years were considered altogether.

The data for the events used in this research were collected (and cross-compared) from some different websites (see useful links) and books resumed in this official website of our institutional research project. Our results are presented in the form of several graphs, considering separately the most active countries as well as all countries together.