I recall the excitement felt across the world when Yuri Gagarin became not only the first man in space but also the first to orbit the earth, when the Soviet Union once led the space race, in 1961. The Soviets managed to get their man aloft weeks before the Americans, who only achieved an up and down flight, not an orbit. The Soviets had also been the first to get a satellite up, the Sputnik in 1957, causing absolute consternation in the West as the achievement indicated they were well ahead on rocket technology and potentially intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting America in the front line for the first time in its history. The reaction fired the programme that took the Americans to the moon.
At that time Britain was one of the world leaders in aviation and had its own rocket in the design process. One did not then imagine it would take another fifty four years for the first Brit to be blasted into space. Nor that he would be atop a Russian rocket. Or that he would be accompanied on the historic (to the UK) mission to the International Space Station by two others, a Russian and an American. Times do change. More than people realise. Especially politicians.