The History of Flight (Humanoid Edition): HH-591287#127g
The mastery of flight (and then space travel) is a major step forward for any species and each race develops this capability in it's own time. Given the sheer number of races, documenting all of them in a single document would be a physical impossibility. Below is the Humanoid edition and it deals with the humanoid development of flight. Other documents in the series detail most of the major species (available from Central Library Institution customer services).
Mankind's development of flight and space travel is something of a stop start affair, briefly progressing but then standing still for long periods of time. Initial attempts at flight were less than productive and given the almost neanderthal development of the species at the time it can come as no great surprise. Further problems such as the fragility of humanoids meant that mankind was essentially ground based for many millions of years.
The discovery of rudimentary explosives offered mankind it's first opportunity at flight but a lack of control and foresight ensured that they were never used to their fullest. Simple flight became a reality following research into simplistic aerodynamics but this did not take place until approximately 1000 years after the discovery of their explosives.
The aerodynamics discoveries fuelled a major leap for humanoids but as is typical of the race they never pushed the idea to it's logical conclusion. Inter-continental flight became a reality but mankind simply stopped pushing further and switched back to explosives. Modifications to primitive inter-continental ballistic missiles provided mankind with it's first opportunity to break away from it's atmosphere but stupidity and shortsightedness effectively simply moved the barrier a few standard miles further into space.
Quite happy with simple planet orbiting, humanoids once again stagnated and given their lack of scientific understanding at the time it's probably just as well. Mankind's first forays into the galaxy were disasterous and resulted in death to their guinea pigs (a lack of understanding with regards to radiation shielding meant next to no protection for their pilots). Taking over 200 years to eventually progress from orbital trips to a simple inter-system journey, mankind's progress was hampered by the same switch in technologies that had plagued it when trying to acheive simple atmospheric flight. Simple thermo-explosive reactions gave way to crude ionic drives, only for ionic drives to then be replaced by thermo-explosive reactions again.
Intervention by the Galactic Council eventually led to humanoids becoming aware of the wider galaxy and the existence of other species, and in the pre-Topwer convention days, mankind was given hyperspace technology. This could obviously never happen now given the Topwer ruling on non-interference and it's partly because of humanoids that the convention came into being.
Considering themselves an integral part of the galaxy's social fabric, humanoids have had little impact in the field of space travel invention and are now simply another set of users of it.
Dr Gaga Rin - Reskrei University of Space History
For more information please refer to the following:
Humanoid - Proto-Organism to Biped (Ref. No.: HH-892436#681)
Drive Technology (Ref. No.: HH-236239#234b)
Topwer Convention Minutes (Ref. No.: CDoc000691B8)