posted 03-20-2004 10:31 AM               

Holland has already had at least one astronaut already. Dr. Wubbo Ockels flew aboard Challenger in late 1985 on the Spacelab D-1 mission.

posted 03-20-2004 03:59 PM               

Sweden has Fuglesang (scheduled for STS-116), the Netherlands already had Ockels on STS-61A in 1985, and you could add
- Iceland
- Malta
- Cyprus
- Albania
- Andorra
- Liechtenstein
- Vatican
- San Marino

posted 03-21-2004 02:11 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Rodina:

Point taken, Juergen, but by microstates I meant to exclude Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino and the Holy See, which probabl don't pay enough dues to the ESA (if any) to get themselves an astronaut.

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I don't think these "microstates" as you call'em are even a Member of ESA. Even Portugal joined only fairly recently.

Cyprus is at least big enough to host two national entities at present ;-)

Still, we speak of the 50 States of the United States, even though some of them would, by size of their territory or number of inhabitants, qualify for the description of "microstate" as well (NH, HI, Washington DC, ....) ;-)

Francis is of course right about Tryggvason and Iceland, but I have the same problem of "where to put him". A similar discussion could apply to US astronauts born elsewhere -- M. Collins (Rome),
- S. Lucid (China),
- one born in Micronesia (don't remember the name)
- Chang Díaz (Costa Rica),
- Noriega (Peru),
- Chawla (India);
- López Alegría (Spain);
- C. Michael Foale and Piers Sellers (UK);

While Collins and Lucid were probably US citizens by the time of their birth, does that make them the first Chinese astronauts or first Italian man to fly to the Moon?

Does that make the others - who had the nationality of their birthplace and acquired US citizenship after the emigrated to the US - a Peruvian, Costa Rican, British, Indian, Spanish spacefarer?

Difficult discussion .....

posted 03-21-2004 02:15 AM            

Are you thinking of Jim Newman?

posted 05-01-2004 12:51 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Shuttlefan:
Hi,
interesting topic, let´s take the opposite point of view: Some of the European countries sent up quite a lot of spacefarers (yes, I know , Europe did not do this on its own and with own rockets). 10 Germans have been up there - but surely very,very much less than 10 % of German people will know this. Next in the list are France and Canada with 8, Italy and Japan 5,if I´m counting right, so there are some European countries among the runners-up behind the two big space nations. The first one of a nation in space always makes a headline but then interest soon withdraws.

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In respect to Europe, one should keep in mind that the countries mentioned - Germany, France, Italy - are also the largest countries within ESA and largest contributors to its budget. The only contender not included in this list in respect to size (but not funding to the Manned programme) is the United Kingdom, that voluntarily chose to abstain ("no space, please, we are British").

Smaller ESA countries like Belgium ("the biggest funder amongst the small ones") and the Netherlands have had 2 flyers. Others, namely Switzerland, Spain, soon Sweden, have one.

You are of course correct in stating that only the first of something is remembered by a larger public. That is no different when it comes to Moon missions, where only Armstrong is a household name.