May in Space

James May also understands the romance of space travel, and technology in general. 

Put aside the dodgy Top Gear stuff, and the films where he pootles around getting drunk with Oz Clarke. His programmes about children's toys (his and his sisters' "Top Toys") are far more interesting.  They generally play less on nostalgia per se than the imaginative engagement they evoked in their owners.  The joyful series where scaled-up Airfix, Lego, Plasticine, Meccano, Scalextric and Hornby toys are the stars also plays with the same notions.

When he gets to look at grown up toys (jetpacks and other personal flying devices for example) some of the same joy is translated into a pure vision of the numinous in tech.  So it was perhaps unsurprising when - partly in celebration of the Gargarin anniversary - the BBC decided to rebroadcast the 2009 show where May travels into the very high upper atmosphere (the "edge of space") in an American U2 spy plane.

He is overawed by the whole trip - perhaps most notably by the fact that he can see, for the first time, the curvature of the Earth. 

He only reaches, at 70,000 feet, a fraction of Gargarin's orbital distance; and yet, the mere fact that the flight has become, if not routine, then at least so sufficiently straightforward that a paunchy British auto journalist can make the voyage for a piece of TV entertainment is itself amazing.

... And here is part of it...