Astronaut puts space back on nation's agenda

Nearly 55 years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in orbit, the UK is experiencing a surge of space mania thanks to its first official astronaut - a soft-spoken pilot who will spend some of his six-month stint on the International Space Station attempting to brew a decent cup of tea in zero gravity.

Millions around the country paused in front of TVs and computer screens on Tuesday to watch a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Major Tim Peake and two other astronauts - Timothy Kopra of the United States and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia - blast off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Peake, a 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot, is not the first Briton in space. Helen Sharman visited Russia's Mir space station in 1991 on a privately backed mission, and several British-born US citizens flew with NASA's space shuttle program.

But Peake is Britain's first publicly funded British astronaut and the first Briton to visit the International Space Station. The spacecraft docked successfully at the space station roughly six hours after liftoff.

For decades, cost-conscious British governments declined to invest in human space flight, confining the UK's space contribution to robotic missions.

"The UK has taken an understandably hard economic view of human space flight over the years and asked itself what it might be worth," said Kevin Fong, an expert in space medicine who will explore how to survive in space in this year's Royal Institution Christmas science lectures. "The answer to that question is quite a lot, actually."

He said Peake's voyage "has already inspired schoolchildren, and will go on to do so. But there's a wider importance in showing that Britain is not done exploring yet."

The government has been raising Britain's space aspirations for several years. In 2010 it set up the UK Space Agency, which has a relatively modest budget of about 320 million pounds ($481 million) a year.