Why has astronaut Helen Sharman been written out of history?

This is an unexpected follow up to my last blog post about Britain's first astronaut.

Our first astronaut was Helen Sharman. In 1991! I just saw an article on the Guardian website whose title is "Blast off! Why has astronaut Helen Sharman been written out of history?". That is a very good question. Although it doesn't discuss it in the article, a good example is that newspapers - including the very same one this article is from - write her out of their headlines. Remember the Guardian's "Britain's first astronaut hails 'exciting times' for UK's place in spaceflight" from 2014? That headline was referring to Tim Peake who is the seventh British-born person in space. Of course this is how she has been written out of history, not why. To get to the answer to why, they could perhaps ask their colleagues.

I'm not just a complaining person; I try to fix things too. That is why, before the launch of Tim Peake I made an effort to improve Helen Sharman's Wikipedia entry which was sparse and had a big "this is unreliable" off-putting warning at the top of it. After I made a start, others joined in and the result is, I hope, a much better article. - taken from Astronomy Blog (http://ift.tt/1g8FhhM)

from Astronomy Blog http:///blog/astro/001054.shtml
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