That Rodney Relax should have been considered for the first mission to put a poet in space, has always been a mystery. He was 44 and well past his peak of physical fitness. The contempt and bad feeling from the small crew of astronauts, who felt they had endured enough already, may have had something to do with the accident that occured after the shuttlecraft had docked to the spacestation. Stranger still was how, all the shuttlecraft crew, except Rodney, had managed to leave the shuttle before it was jettisoned into space.
An ardent Bowie fan Rodney's last recorded message was somewhat ironic -
"Tell my wife I love her very much."
"She knows" was the reply from mission control.
Rodney Relax the first poet lost in space.