374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. That’s how much time British astronaut Michael Foale has spent in space. As a veteran of six space shuttle missions, he was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and he has also logged more time in space than any other UK citizen.

The son of a Lincolnshire RAF pilot, Foale was born in Louth, and spent his childhood consumed by science fiction fantasies and Star Trek story lines.

Thinking his dreams had been shattered when, at the age of 16, he was rejected from the RAF, the astronaut is living proof that we all have the ability to overcome life’s obstacles and pursue bigger and better things. The expression reach for the stars is certainly apt upon reflection of Michael’s achievements.

Whilst recent months have been turbulent times for the team at NASA — after three decades of space flight, their space shuttle programme recently drew to a close — the county’s very own astronaut remains optimistic about the future of developments in outer space.

Speaking from Houston where he lives with wife Rhonda, daughter Jenna, 19, and son Ian, 16, Michael describes how despite being an emotional time, the moment had come to lower the curtain on this era of space flight.

“It’s terribly important to move on from this,” he says. “The shuttle programme has been drawn out for far too long. The basic flaw is there’s no comprehensive crew help should anything go wrong, and there have been two accidents — two too many.”

Not that Foale has any regrets about his chosen career path. One would be forgiven for wondering how on Earth a Lincolnshire man progresses from small town to solar system. The answer? Brains, brawn, and bucket loads of determination. “After being rejected by the RAF, I began to channel all my energy into academic study,” he explains.

A talent for maths and science, combined with an inherent interest in aeronautics provided substantial motivation, and was ultimately enough to win him a place at Queen’s College, Cambridge from 1975-1978, with Doctoral study until 1982.

Memories of his first mission a decade later back in March 1992 are particularly precious for Mike. “It was great,” he remembers. “We waited for four hours in the darkness for the shuttle’s launch, and only when the sun came up, and began beaming through the windows, did the magnitude of the experience really begin to hit me.”

“It was very dramatic, and it was only at that point that I thought ‘wow, this is real,’” he recalls. “It felt so different to anything we’d encountered in the space simulators,” Mike adds. “When we blasted off, I felt like I’d been kicked in the back, followed by a sensation of supporting immense pressure — like the weight of two grown adults.”

It was not until a later mission to the MIR — the Russian space station — on which the shuttle encountered a collision, and subsequently lost power, that he felt a sense of insignificance as a human being. After losing communication with earth, Mike describes looking out to the galaxy to locate stars in order to measure the shuttle’s movement.

“The lack of contact was like a blot on the heavens,” he says. “It was then that I began to grasp the concept that there was something greater out there, an existence which we know nothing about. Undoubtedly, they know nothing of life on Earth either, and as a single human being I felt extremely insignificant.”

Mike also answered some of the burning questions we Earthlings have about space shuttle survival.

“Much of our way of life is heavily over-emphasised,” he says. “Most things are easy to solve whilst in space!”

First and foremost, on cosmic cuisine, Mike puts ‘space food’ on a par with that of “A medium quality cafeteria! We enjoy a varied menu,” he says. “We mainly rely on vacuum packed meat and vegetables — chicken and rice, with re-hydrated peas and carrots to accompany. It’s all tasty enough,” he jokes. “Plenty of flavour with sufficient spice and seasoning!” In a low-gravity environment foods must be either partially or completely dehydrated to prevent them from spoiling, and are preserved in ration-style packets.

The inability to flow water however, is perhaps the biggest obstacle to every day routine in space. Washing, for example, is only achievable through taking a sponge bath, using towels to mop off excess fluid, which — due to the atmosphere — collects on the skin’s surface in shimmering balls.

As for dealing with nature’s call; “That’s trickier!” he laughs. “The toilets on board use air instead of water in order to handle the low-gravity environment.”

Summing up his experiences in space, Michael says; “I’ve been fortunate to take part in the greatest human exploration. It’s an honour to have been part of such an adventure.”

Remarkably modest about his huge achievement, there’s a sense that it’s all part of the day job, which for one of Nasa’s finest, is the down to Earth reality, but for the rest of us, who look to stars, his career has simply been out of this world.