Post Challenger Explosion flight missions question?

There were tons of launches and explosions, not too many manned though. It all started with the Nazi's V2 rockets in WWII. After the war, we captured this technology and had the German rocket scientists work with us to make more rockets. We didn't originally intend to go into space, but we wanted a long rang missle. Eventually we built bigger and better rockets. Then during the cold war, the Russians sent Sputnik into orbit, we thought thery could drop bomb on us from space, so we started to give a real boost to the space program. Then we started to pump out satellites (about 1/2 of them failing) and eventually J.F.K. was elected president. He promised that America would be the first to the moon. Eventually we did. The Apollo missions started it, and Apollo 11 having the first succesful moon landing. U.S.A.! Then Russia fell apart, and we rule and now we are about to put the shuttle out of commision.