Hello, and welcome to Happy Plays with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that pushes

the perceived limits of human capability. Today, I'm chatting to Major Tim Peek.

We had this 10 minutes to watch the sun go down, and that was the opportunity when I was

able to just put the tether on and push away from the space station and float in the blackness,

and then you kind of think, well, hang on a second, we're pretty clever, ask humans,

and we give ourselves a hard time, and until we find other intelligent life, we are the

consciousness of the universe. And then you think, well, this is where we come from,

we are stardust, we originated out here, and look what we've done. We're now looking

back on ourselves, looking back on our planet. So you go from feeling very small and insignificant

to actually almost feeling part of the universe itself.

Only 628 people in human history have left Earth. Tim is one of them.

After nearly 18 years of military service, Tim replied to an online recruiting advert

for the European Space Agency. This was a massive deal because UK citizens have previously

been unable to apply to become ESA astronauts. You'll hear more in this chat about the mindset

that made him jump at the chance of a once in a lifetime opportunity. He went on to become

the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station. Now he's written

a book that traces the lives of the other remarkable people who forged the way for space

travel. I was so fascinated reading this book. It's called Space, the human story. And

it's just the most incredible insight into the dangers of space, the magic of it, and

just the relatively humdrum too. I spoke to Tim remotely a couple of weeks ago and we covered

so much from the lessons we can learn about resilience and perspective from those who

have been to space, to the amazing scientific leaps happening in space that could benefit

...