'Never cut your hair in space'

In 2006, Dr Patrick was on board the International Space Station

It is often said you can't get a Yorkshireman to pass Scotch Corner. In December 2006, Dr Nicholas Patrick passed it at a height of a little over 210 miles.

Born in Saltburn on Teesside and growing up in Ingleby Greenhow on the North Yorkshire Moors, just south of Middlesbrough, he was now a crew member of the shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission.

"It was a long and tortuous path. My parents actually left Yorkshire when I was four-and-a-half. My father came to the United States to do a few years at University.

'Most of the maps we look at are political maps. You don't see the borders from space'

"Then we moved back to London and I, as a young boy, became very interested in exploring, sailing particularly and that sailing eventually led to an interest in aviation. At the same time I decided to become an engineer."

After learning to fly at the Royal Air Force's Cambridge University Air Squadron, Nicholas moved to the US to study at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He became a U.S. Citizen in 1994.

A skilled pilot and accomplished aviation engineer, Dr Patrick was an ideal candidate for NASA.

"Aviation and physics are actually a very good background for becoming an astronaut. They're the two things we really need to be good at; flying and learning about complicated things."

December 9, 2006: STS-116 Discovery Mission

Dr Patrick was among the seven crew members to leave Earth to install the new P5 spacer truss segment on the International Space Station.

"The launch itself is amazing. You're thrust into space. You feel three times your own weight as the space shuttle is accelerating into space.

Dec 2006: Discovery takes off

"The ride is full of vibration and strange sounds and light coming in through the windows, light caused by the flames coming out of the engines.

"All of that acceleration and vibration and so on goes on for about eight-and-a-half minutes, so it's really, quite literally, the ride of a lifetime.

"The best way to describe it is probably asking somebody how they would feel in a small sports car with the pedal pushed to the floor, going over potholes and wearing a wetsuit."

In 2006, Dr Patrick spent 12 days in space. In February 2010, he is scheduled to go into space again and will be making his first space walk. "By the time we do our first space walk on STS-130, it will be, I don't know, another four or five more days I've had in space, you're very used to the idea of floating.

"You know you're not going to float away. The problem is that the outside hatch on the space station points down and it points down 200 miles to the Earth.

"I think you really have to gear yourself up to be able to look out of that hatch and think, 'I know I'm not going to fall.'"

February 1, 2003

As the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, Dr Patrick and his colleagues had to consider the ultimate price that they themselves may have to pay for pushing human achievement as far as they do.

"It was a very difficult time for all of us, not just because of the tragedy and what it meant for the space programme, but of course we all lost seven colleagues and friends on that mission.

It's like being... in a small sports car with the pedal pushed to the floor, going over potholes and wearing a wetsuit Dr Nicholas Patrick

"It's not the first time that's happened in the space programme. I remember distinctly being at University when the Challenger accident happened and at the time I remember thinking, 'Well I'd still like to be an astronaut.'

"I don't think either Challenger or Columbia have changed anybody's resolve here. What we're trying to do is so much bigger than any of us; literally trying to put humanity into space.

"While nobody wants to pay any price for that in terms of human life, we think the goal really is worth all the costs."

In space, nobody can say you smell

Preparation for a trip to space begins in earnest, says Dr Patrick, around eight months before take-off. "The training workload is very high. I liken it to being on a treadmill that you don't have control of."

On top of the classroom work, once or twice a week, Dr Patrick and his fellow astronauts carry out space-suited exercises in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, a giant swimming pool designed to simulate working in space.

Being 30 feet up a ladder is very unnerving, but once you get a few hundred feet, or a thousand feet up a ladder, I am very comfortable Dr Nicholas Patrick

Preparation for a trip to space ends with a very short haircut. You can't take a shower in space. You can't wash your hair.

"Being 30 feet up a ladder is very unnerving, but once you get a few hundred feet, or a thousand feet up a ladder, I am very comfortable."

Dr Nicholas PatrickOut of mutual necessity though, says Dr Patrick, everyone is very polite about it. "The beauty of not being able to open a window is you're all in the same environment and after a while you stop noticing. You have to be very careful about personal hygiene.

"Simple things like, if you were to cut your hair in space, you'd have to do it with a kind of Hoover attachment, essentially, so that all the tiny stray hairs don't end up in other people's eyes, or clogging something you don't want them to clog.

"If you clip your nails, you have to catch each individual nail clipping, or it will just float away and end up somewhere."

Back to Earth

As the adventure holiday grows in popularity, so does the term, 'life-changing experience'. Throughout history, man has been inspired by the great natural wonders of the universe.

Dr Patrick plays down the philosophical side of being one of the few to see the greatest natural wonder ever viewed by man.

STS-116 mission badge

"We're all unusual in that we grew up with the photographs of the Apollo Space Programme, pictures of the Earth from 250 thousand miles away that I think changed humanity's perspective and I'm a child of that generation.

"I recognise that the Earth is a small and fragile blue marble floating in the vast void of space, so space flight didn't change me like I think it did the early astronauts.

"On the other hand, you do come back with a very accentuated impression of how fragile the atmosphere is, how the world is really a physical place without political borders. Most of the maps we look at are political maps, but really the world is a physical place. You don't see the borders from space.

"Back to the atmosphere, when you do see that, it's extremely thin. It's like a coat of paint on the outside of a football. It makes you realise how careful we all have to be."

A family spaceman

It is not just astronauts who have to accept the possibility they may pay the ultimate price for the goal they are chasing. Arguably more emotionally difficult is being the partner left behind, powerless to do anything to ensure your loved one comes home.

Dr Patrick's wife accepted from the beginning that this was the life her husband had to lead and that, one day, maybe, he may leave his family for two-and-a-half years to make a journey to Mars.

"She's prepared to grit her teeth and bear it and it's also sort of fun for her and the children to watch me in space and be part of the space programme."

But it is clearly the importance of goal that validates the risk. She made him sell his motorcycle.