I couldn’t sleep so I got up slightly earlier than usual today, but I’m now very glad I did. I just saw this fantastic story on the BBC breakfast program: the European Space Agency is now investigating training it’s first astronaut with a physical disability. “John McFall is the European Space Agency’s first ever para-astronaut, selected to study how feasible it is for someone with a physical disability to live and work in space.” I naturally find that very exciting indeed. It was first announced last September, but it was great to see this being discussed. It’s an encouraging sign that organisations like the ESA are taking the inclusion of disabled people seriously, as well as sending out a strong message that ‘we’ have just as much to contribute to human progress as anyone else.

The program stated that we might not see McFall going into space until the end of the decade, so we’ll obviously have to wait to see if this comes to fruition. Nonetheless, it’s a very encouraging step forward. The image of a person with an obvious physical disability, floating in Zero-G alongside his able-bodied colleagues, will obviously be very powerful indeed. And who knows where this may lead? With any luck, McFall will be the first of many, and lots of other disabled people with all kinds of disabilities will follow him into the final frontier. I might even go up there one day….Mind you things might get a little complicated and sticky – imagine loads of drops of dribble floating around, weightless, inside a small enclosed cabin several kilometres above the Earth!