Interesting Facts

According to quarterly magazine Delayed Gratification, to date 531 people have travelled into space. (The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight varies, but The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines spaceflight as any flight over 100 kilometres (62 miles) high. This definition is recognized by most countries.  Funnily there's a list of 528 people on Wiki, but the edition of the magazine I read listed 531 people.  I managed to find a copy of the original PDF, but can't read the font and I'm not sure who the extra 3 people are.  Anyone with better eyesight is welcome to look.) PDF Here

The last American space shuttle flight rolled to a stop at 5:58 a.m.

The space shuttle program cost American taxpayers $93 each year. (Over the years the United States has spent $196 billion on the space shuttle program over its lifespan. The total cost of the program over its life was supposed to be $90 billion for up to 50 launches per year. The highest number of shuttle launches in any one year was only nine. With the retirement of the shuttles, the space station will now rely on Russian, European and Japanese rockets to bring up supplies, and now, without its own shuttle program, NASA will have to spend $64 million per astronaut per trip to hitch a ride on a Russian spacecraft.) Source

A team of scientists at the University of California, have found a new planet outside our solar system that has the potential to support life. (The planet, called Gliese 581g, orbits a red dwarf star and is roughly three times the mass of Earth and only around 20 light years away. Of course a light year is 9,460,528,410,545,436.2688 meters, or 5,878,625,373,184 miles, so it might take a bit of time to get there.)

Only a dozen countries - including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Russia and the USA, ban travel and immigration for HIV-positive people. (The US Senate has now voted to overturn the travel ban, which has been in force since 1987.)

English is the main language in space travel. (Knowing a bit of Russian can't hurt either.)