The First Brit in Space: Helen Sharman

Helen Sharman appears by arrangement with DBA Speakers www.dbaspeakers.com

In 1989, Helen Sharman was driving home from work when a radio ad changed her life. Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary. Britain had no space agency, no human spaceflight programme, and no tradition of sending civilians into orbit. Helen was a 26-year-old food technologist from Sheffield with a chemistry degree and no military background. She applied anyway.

Eighteen months later, she was sitting on top of a Soviet rocket - and on 18 May 1991, she became the first British person in space.

Helen joins Hugh to tell the full story: the 13,000 applicants, the gruelling selection process, and the live television broadcast that revealed her as one of the two finalists. She describes life at Star City on the cusp of the Cold War's end, the manual docking crisis 200 kilometres from Mir when the navigation system failed and the crew had to act alone, and those evening hours when five people gathered around a porthole and simply looked at the earth. She also reflects on what it actually takes to go somewhere extraordinary — and why the qualities that got her there might be less unusual than we think.

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