Brian “Rocketman” May

By Logan McRay

Having survived the pathological altruism of Bob Geldof and “fashion sense” of Freddie Mercury, Queen guitarist, Brian May, now looks to conquer the stars. The renaissance spaceman has a Ph.D. in astrophysics and recently wrote a musical anthem for NASA’s New Horizons space exploration mission. May shared his contemplations on space travel with GeekWire:

“I don’t really fancy the idea of going up and having a few seconds and then coming back down again. That doesn’t appeal to me. What appeals to me more is, for instance, the ISS [International Space Station], where you can go up there and you sit there and contemplate the world which you were born on, and watch it turn underneath you.”

May elaborated:

“How incredible would that be?” he said here at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory during a Q&A with journalists. “I’ve been lucky enough to meet a number of the men who walked on the moon, and they all, I think, have a spiritual quality which is beyond what any of us have understood.”

It’s heartening to know that the European soul can write stirring rock anthems and still seek to travel, explore, and enlighten.