In the early noughts there was money in education. The government of the time wanted to “improve” education, whatever that means, and so they pumped money into the education system. Yes, a lot of that money was on the back of the upcoming crash and deregulation of the City that the government had allowed, but it was still money. Every year post Labour has been a real terms decrease in funding for schools. This boon in training of staff allowed me to spend a week at the Kennedy Space Centre learning about using space and space exploration to encourage learning. It was during this trip that I met and had dinner with Al Worden of Apollo 15. He was the command module pilot and while he didn’t step foot on the moon he did orbit it many times.
Later in 2004 there the group that had taken me to Florida for the education training also brought a real life astronaut over the the UK to meet school children and hopefully inspire them. As I was part of the team from Kent I got to bring a bunch of pupils to see him talk and also I had dinner with him and his family in the evening. There was about twenty of us at the dinner and I didn’t want to crowd him so I wandered into the dining room somewhere around last place but ended up sitting opposite him, his wife and kids. I had a great time chatting to them all.
The NASA astronaut I met was Mark Kelly. He and his twin brother had both been in space a number of times and now Mark Kelly is a Senator for Arizona in the USA Senate. He has recently been arguing with the Head of the DoD as Kelly is on the side of rationality and sense whereas his boss is not.
The year was 2004. It feels like an absolute age ago now!