Meanwhile, the former Science minister, Lord Willetts, confessed to feeling "romantic" about Britain's spacefaring future.
Roach eases us into the story, with an anecdote that reveals the cultural differences among spacefaring nations.
On a good day, spacefaring nations observe certain understandings, such as how to launch objects safely into orbit.
Whoever takes them on, the challenges will be greater than any that spacefaring nations have yet faced.
And one of the delights here is that the reader makes planetfall too, joining the community of camera-bearing, spacefaring robots and their human handlers.
Peake has received intensive training for space walks, or extravehicular activities (EVAs), as they are known in the acronym-rich world of spacefaring.
According to the report, the amount of debris cluttering low Earth orbit has risen dramatically in half a century of spacefaring.
Carl Sagan, who had the initial idea for the record, wrote in the 1970s: "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilisations in interstellar space.
All of these accomplishments were spacefaring firsts, Mori says.
Sustainment of space assets is now paramount to the economies and security of spacefaring nations.
This passage, in Garrett Serviss' 1898 story Edison's Conquest of Mars, describes the moment when a band of spacefaring humans realise they are literally standing on a goldmine.
