The first British person in space

Without the loss of Challenger, a Briton would have flown in space on the shuttle in the 1980s. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite)>

I know we don’t fawn over astronauts here, but I’m not sure what additional “respect” or “adulation” you’d expect? She may not be a household name now, but she certainly was at the time.

Our media is full of arts students and engineers are the people who come to fix your boiler. When technology is talked about, its only really impressive if it comes from somewhere else and sits in their hand.

I'm from one of the other (forgotten) colonies so my perspective is partially from the inside and partially outside. and I think people in the UK care so much about preserving the abundant (and often rather ugly) past that they don't leave any room for the future. Satellites and spaceships and science and technology are horrible things that intrude and change life and change has often not been pleasant.

Conversely those that do want change have sometimes taken such a high and mighty approach that the things they did were entirely for themselves and proving some point rather than about creating a place that is wonderful to live in - hence the worship of the past.

Anyhow I do know about Helen Sharman and so do all the space enthusiasts generally but people here don't even know we have a satellite manufacturing industry that's quite successful and very sophisticated.

That said, she had an OBE, so has been recognised.

She has had book tours, and has appeared on Brian Cox vehicles and the Sky at Night on numerous occasions.

Why isn't she well commemorated then?

* Personality? It obviously took personal toughness and resolve to get where she did. So that's moot. But she's never gone down the Chris Hadfield and Buzz Aldrin routes.

* Declining relations with Russia. Deffo a possibility. That and the fact that the UK media is very US-centric.

* The shine had gone off human space travel by the early nineties. Probes like Voyager etc were delivering the more exciting news. Her mission was fairly routine from what I remember.

There have been very few space travellers from the UK since. No Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish at all. It's worth pointing out that both Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin had big parades and tours in Scotland back in the day. Armstrong went to his ancestral Langholm and got the freedom of the town. Gagarin toured mining communities to great excitement. There is even a Gagarin Way in a town in Fife long after the mines have gone.

If we're talking about commemoration, then maybe she could have had a role in the London Olympics or various Commonwealth Games. Seems odd.

But NASA does that all the time. They recently claimed to perform the first flight and sound transmissions from another planet. The Soviet Venera missions had already done this during the 1980s from Venus. NASA performed the first powered flight on Mars.

The distinction is Cold War propaganda that has never made any sense to me. We have two English words to describe the same thing, but one is only used if the act was done or facilitated by Russia?