“It stays with you forever:” Aberdeen Astronaut reveals what it takes to boldly go to space

BRIAN Binnie can still remember the throwaway comment from his mum that would send him to the stars.

“She asked me what I wanted to be,” said Brian, whose dad, William, was Scottish. “I loved planes and said I wanted to fly, to do something that got me in the air. She said that if she was a wee boy she’d want to be an astronaut.

“I didn’t even really know what an astronaut was and she proceeded to paint this picture of rockets and planets and stars. That fired my imagination and planted the seed in my mind.”

American-born Brian lived in Aberdeenshire from the age of four to his mid-teens. After returning to the States, he pursued his dream, becoming one of the 500 or so people to boldly go into space.

And as new film First Man hits the screens, telling the story of how Neil Armstrong came to take those pioneering steps on the Moon, Brian has revealed his impressions of the pathfinding astronaut.

“He was a unique individual,” said Brian, 65, of Armstrong. “He was a leader who understood the technology and knew how to ask the right questions.”

Brian, who piloted the experimental aircraft SpaceShipOne’s flight into space in 2004, added: “I work at Edwards Air Force base near where he learned to fly the lunar landing trainer. One day something went wrong with one of the engines and he had to eject.

“When his bosses heard, they assumed he’d be in the hospital but they found him back at his desk working. That was the kind of guy he was.

“I know he was a very calming presence and voice for the other crew members he flew with.

“There can be few things anyone has ever done that had as much tension, difficulty. The potential for something to go wrong was way off the charts.

“When he didn’t like the landing site on the moon he just manoeuvred along until he found one he did like. Alarms were going off all around and there was just seconds-worth of fuel left, but he was the coolest guy to pull it off.

“When so many astronauts developed psychological problems on their return because of the enormity of what they’d done, Neil was perfectly fine with it.”

Brian was 16 when, like the rest of the world, he watched that iconic moon landing. It came a year after he’d sat on the edge of his seat in a London cinema with his dad, totally captivated by movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That and the lunar landing inspired Brian further and he spent decades flying in the US Navy before becoming a test pilot. He piloted the inaugural powered test flight of SpaceShipOne, the first non-governmental manned spacecraft, launched mid-air from the underside of an aircraft. Brian subsequently became the 435th person to go into space.

First Man has been praised for the realistic portrayal of the mission and Brian says that getting into space pushes endurance to the limits.

“The solid rocket boosters produce all the shuddering and shaking and it was a very violent environment to be in,” said Brian. “Every one of those guys said the best part of the ride was when you shut the motor down. With SpaceShipOne you could hear all of this fluid flowing through plumbing right next to you.

“It was a shrill, shrieking, calamitous environment. And the rocket motor set up an instability that meant the whole vehicle and myself shook violently.

“Rockets are exhilarating, scary and humbling. They spread your emotions from fear to fun and back again.”

But once the rockets have done their job in taking the craft into space, Brian says it’s an experience like no other.

“All the shuddering and shrieking stops and you enter this wonderful realm of weightlessness. All the tension goes out of your body and you’re rewarded by looking outside and having a pretty fabulous view. I could see about 500 miles in either direction.

“I could see the Pacific Ocean, weather patterns, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the desert where Neil Armstrong did his training, just so much. It doesn’t last forever, but it lasts long enough to stay with you forever.

“When you’ve been there, you want to go back. That’s how compelling the whole thing is. There is nothing like it.”

It was just seven years from President Kennedy’s stated ambition in 1962 to put a man in space to the 1969 landing.

It all happened at a breathtaking pace. And having been involved with the privately-operated commercial spacecraft, Brian says there is plenty more still to come from space tourism.

“Once SpaceShipTwo gets going and commercial flights become a reality I’ve always said Virgin Galactic won’t need a marketing team. It will sell itself. People will come off of those flights so buzzing that others will be desperate to experience it for themselves.

“We’ll get to a point where, instead of a family holiday to the beach or whatever, you could go to a space hotel. Designs have been on the books for decades and I can easily see that happening.”

While Elon Musk has promoted his plans for a community on Mars, Brian simply can’t see the point of a long flight to an arid, unforgiving planet.

But as the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing approaches next July, he insists the moon is still the place to be.

“It offers a far better opportunity for us to expand our thinking and our hopes,” added Brian. “It’s relatively close and you can stage things from there. So much energy has to be expended to get out of the Earth’s gravity and get into orbit.

“Once you’ve done that, you’re halfway to anywhere. You then don’t need big rockets. Building infrastructure on the moon is a very enticing scenario.”

First Man is in cinemas on Friday