I was hom in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1950 and by the age of ten I had developed an interest, like many children, in prehistoric animals and astronomy. In 1962 the first American piloted orbital flights began and my teacher at Wibsey Junior School, Mr Slater, brought a radio into the classroom so that we could listen to these flights. We also had Earth globes and maps to enable us to see where he was overflying, and those afternoons were given over to following the flights of John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.