On a good day, spacefaring nations observe certain understandings, such as how to launch objects safely into orbit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a hard time believing there's a planet out there in the abyss full of spacefaring creatures who are willing to take time out of their busy trans-dimensional schedule to destroy a boyband, but maybe once you've mastered faster-than-light travel, all you want to do is kick back, listen to What Makes You Beautiful on repeat, and send your boyfriend snapchats from the space mall.
Whoever takes them on, the challenges will be greater than any that spacefaring nations have yet faced.
The new year is upon us, and there will be no escape from the relentless comparisons between the spacefaring future world we saw in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the reality of our measly earthbound life in the real 2001.
