SPACEFACTS has the unmistakable feel of a database that existed because two people kept caring about the rows.
Joachim Becker and Heinz Janssen built the larger site around biographies, portraits, mission reports, statistical tables, EVA data, and human-spaceflight records covering astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts, and candidates from around the world.
The linked ISS-position page is only one small doorway into that larger collection.
A hobby database became a reference source
Becker traces his interest in human spaceflight back to Apollo 8’s lunar orbit in 1968. He later began building a computer-assisted database of biographical and statistical material on space travelers.
Janssen’s interest developed separately and eventually joined the same project.
The site’s structure reflects that database mentality.
People are not presented only as famous names. They are connected to missions, agencies, flight assignments, portraits, launch and landing events, EVA records, and statistical tables.
The old guestbook is revealing too. Visitors from the early 2000s sent corrections, family information, missing biographical details, and praise for the site’s coverage. One retired scientist who had trained U.S. astronauts offered additional material. Other visitors pointed out errors in names and dates.
That feedback loop is how hand-maintained reference sites become unexpectedly durable.
The site’s update history shows years of incremental maintenance through Soyuz, Shuttle, Crew Dragon, Shenzhou, and newer astronaut selections. The visual design changed far less than the underlying records.
That is almost the inverse of the modern web, where interfaces are frequently rebuilt while old information quietly disappears.
SPACEFACTS kept the database moving.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes specialist databases because a good personal reference site often survives by doing one thing obsessively well for years.
Here, that thing is remembering who went to space, when, and with whom.