If only a Scotsman had boldly gone… | Kevin McKenna

The UK Space Conference opens in Glasgow this week – where better to hold it with all these UFOs around?Like many Scots, I am proud of my country's role in Earth's understanding of outer space. When it first dawned on me as a child that the most important member of Captain James T Kirk's Starship Enterprise was Scottish, I was bursting with pride. Neither do you get to have names such as Neil Armstrong or John Glenn unless there is a significant quotient of Scots blood in you. And when it was revealed many years later that Obi-Wan Kenobi too was Scottish, well… our place in cosmology was finally secured. There have even been as yet unconfirmed reports that Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, had a copy of Robert Burns's poems with him (possibly the Kilmarnock edition).All of this engendered a real love of outer space in me – and that gnawing feeling that we might not be alone. This was manifest in all sorts of curious ways that have left me to conclude that me, spacemen and the planets are all in alignment.The first song I ever learned was Aiken Drum, the man with the comestible-laden coat who lived on the moon. The first rock concert I ever attended was at the Glasgow Apollo, so called because it could only ever properly be appreciated if you were at the space-cadet stage of intoxication. Neither was it any coincidence that the band I'd chosen to see on my Apollo debut was UFO. One of my favourite rock classics is Montrose's Space Station Number 5, and even now I am ...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Comment UFOs Star Trek UK news Scotland The Observer Space Comment is free Source Type: news