Space stations and orbital colonies

Since the end of the Moon Race, space stations have become the mainstay of human spaceflight. The Soviets sent up the first one in 1971, together with the story that such a station had been their real goal all along and that they had never intended to land cosmonauts on the Moon by 1970 at all. Over a span of eleven years, the Soviet Union launched no less than seven Salyut space stations, with the final crew leaving the last one in 1986. In that timeframe, NASA launched and operated only a single station, Skylab, instead putting most of its money and effort into the development of the Space Shuttle.