According to a story on the BBC, Charles Simonyi has described himself as "the first nerd in space".
Wonder how Mark Shuttleworth feels about that.
Recently in space Category
I've always wanted to be an astronaut. I still have vague memories of my parents waking me up in the the middle of the night to watch the Eagle land on the moon in 1969. And from then on I've known that some day I want to go into space.
Astronauts have always been older than me. And whilst they are older than me, then there's always a chance that I can be an astronaut when I get to their age. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but it keeps me going.
But now that's no longer true. The current space shuttle mission has a crew member (the brilliantly named Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper) who was born in February 1963 and is therefore five months (exactly five months as it happens) younger than me. As far as I know, she's the first astronaut (or cosmonaut) who is younger than me. And if youngsters like her are being sent up then I'm going to have to finally accept that I might just be too old to get onto the space programme.
So my only remaining chance of getting into space is to become a space tourist (they've already taken people far younger than me). And that means I need to get a lot more disposable income than I currently have.
p.s. By the way, here's a very cool Wikipedia category - People currently in space
Tussauds closed the London Planetarium closed recently and over the weekend the Guardian reported on its replacement - a show about celebrities called "the Stardome"[1]. One phrase rang particularly true for me.
"It's a no-brainer," said Nicky Marsh, marketing director of the waxwork attractions. And, in several senses, she was right.
I despair.
[1] Do you see what they've done there - you can still see "stars" in the planetarium.
It's a good day for space anniversaries.
On April 12th 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space.
Twenty years later Columbia took off on the first space shuttle flight.
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