On a sadder note: We saluted these as they left us
During 2014 we said goodbye to the four time Shuttle astronaut Steven Nagel, British planetary scientist and Beagle 2 originator, Colin Pillinger, and Grand Prix ace, Sir Jack Brabham.
We also made a valedictory salute to Skylab astronaut, Bill Pogue, Shuttle “satellite rescuer” astronaut, Dale Gardner, and Apollo-Soyuz cosmonaut Valery Kubasov, as well as to the former head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, the ‘Moonraker’ actor, Richard Kiel, and space scientist and writer Frederick Ordway III.
On a lighter note: We noted the perils of Gecko sex in orbit and premature congratulation
The tragic end of the “Romeo and Juliet” gecko lovers on their Russian-sponsored sex-in-space experiment caused regretful headlines. Well, this was until it was realised that the “get-a-grip” copulation test was supposed to be more of a multi-gecko orgy in orbit rather than true love between a pair.
While it was not supposed to be funny, Arianespace’s embarrassing case of “premature congratulation” caused smiles after it announced the successful flight of the Soyuz Galileo launch and then later had to retract this when the pair of Galileo satellites carried were found to be in the wrong orbit.
This organ warned that the Lunar Mission One plan to allow people to send their images and human hairs to be buried on the Moon might result in a few naked “selfies”, plus a few “short and curlies” being sent in.
While hackers continued to have a go at mainline space operators and even entertainment companies (the NOAA and Sony being a notable ones), the internet “cloud” was also found to be very insecure by those who inadvertently uploaded nude photographic shots of themselves. Still, at least those internet hackers and spammers might now have some retribution to worry about.
SpaceX rockets-to-Tesla electric cars billionaire, Elon Musk, noted that robots sent out to end spam might logically kill off the humans responsible. This will probably happen first in Nigeria. 
Thankfully, the serial-marrying Musk, who is sadly divorcing his second wife, film actress and director, Talulah Riley, for a second time, admitted that he might have been reading too much science fiction. However, Musk’s warning was later echoed by the disabled genius-physicist, Stephen Hawking, who noted that developments in artificial intelligence could eventually mean the end of mankind. Gulp.
On that optimistic note, we wish that all our readers have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
