I was a child at the time and I absolutely remember her getting adulation and celebrity. The may have faded from a lot of memories since, but at the time she was definitely recognised

I think everybody in Britain of a certain age knows Helen Sharman. Her name popped into my head the moment I read the title of this post. It was certainly a big deal at the time.

I know we don’t fawn over astronauts here, but I’m not sure what additional “respect” or “adulation” you’d expect? She may not be a household name now, but she certainly was at the time.

The public don't care that much about space I think - in the UK. It's not something people can pump themselves up with borrowed pride about.

Our media is full of arts students and engineers are the people who come to fix your boiler. When technology is talked about, its only really impressive if it comes from somewhere else and sits in their hand.

I'm from one of the other (forgotten) colonies so my perspective is partially from the inside and partially outside. and I think people in the UK care so much about preserving the abundant (and often rather ugly) past that they don't leave any room for the future. Satellites and spaceships and science and technology are horrible things that intrude and change life and change has often not been pleasant.

Conversely those that do want change have sometimes taken such a high and mighty approach that the things they did were entirely for themselves and proving some point rather than about creating a place that is wonderful to live in - hence the worship of the past.

Anyhow I do know about Helen Sharman and so do all the space enthusiasts generally but people here don't even know we have a satellite manufacturing industry that's quite successful and very sophisticated.

I'm not sure how hitching a ride with another space agency is a huge achievement. For her personally yes, but it's hardly national pride stuff, is it?

That said, she had an OBE, so has been recognised.

As others have pointed out at the time she absolutely did get attention. What the modern UK has memory holed is just how bonkersly pro-Russian it was in the 90s; everything from Tetris, Newton handwriting recognition, software generally, rockets, materials, nanotech, new gas supplies, having Abramovich buy Chelsea and the result being practically all the upper middle class exploring Russian (and ex Soviet) connections for investment. The former USSR was then what Qatar etc. are today. It does seem plausible that she fell into that hole along with everything else.

Everyone knows who Helen Sharman is.

She got a lot, and I mean a lot, of publicity at the time in the UK and I remember it well. However, her mission in itself wasn't particularly exciting and she certainly didn't engage in any gimmicks like playing a guitar in space.

She has had book tours, and has appeared on Brian Cox vehicles and the Sky at Night on numerous occasions.

Why isn't she well commemorated then?

* Personality? It obviously took personal toughness and resolve to get where she did. So that's moot. But she's never gone down the Chris Hadfield and Buzz Aldrin routes.

* Declining relations with Russia. Deffo a possibility. That and the fact that the UK media is very US-centric.

* The shine had gone off human space travel by the early nineties. Probes like Voyager etc were delivering the more exciting news. Her mission was fairly routine from what I remember.

There have been very few space travellers from the UK since. No Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish at all. It's worth pointing out that both Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin had big parades and tours in Scotland back in the day. Armstrong went to his ancestral Langholm and got the freedom of the town. Gagarin toured mining communities to great excitement. There is even a Gagarin Way in a town in Fife long after the mines have gone.

If we're talking about commemoration, then maybe she could have had a role in the London Olympics or various Commonwealth Games. Seems odd.

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