Fast facts about James May's U-2 flight and Travel To The Edge Of Space

U-2 planes fly at the limit of conventional aviation.

At 70,000 feet, James was flying above 95 per cent of the Earth's atmosphere (by mass).

James wore a U-2 space suit identical to the one used by NASA during the first Shuttle Orbiter flight in 1981.

The physiological effects of a body being exposed to the atmosphere, without wearing the correct equipment at 70,000 feet, are just as lethal as exposure on the surface of the moon: no amount of breathable oxygen, delivered by any means, will keep you alive.

At approximately 63,000 feet, exposed body fluids like tears and saliva begin to boil. This is known as Armstrong's Limit – not after Neil Armstrong, but the pioneering flight surgeon Harry Armstrong, often referred to as "the father of space medicine".

In the Fifties space was considered to begin at just 50,000 feet.

100km /62.1 miles/328,000ft (the Kármán line) is the official boundary of space today.

Six fast facts about the Apollo 11 mission

1. By landing on the Moon in 1969, the Apollo 11 crew met President Kennedy's mandate to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth by the end of the Sixties.

2. Nixon had originally prepared a long speech to read during the historic phone call with the astronauts on the moon but kept his words brief, to honour Kennedy's lunar landing legacy.

3. After returning to Earth, the Apollo 11 astronauts were quarantined for fear of undiscovered pathogens being picked up from the moon.

4. During the his flight, Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin snapped off the control required to ignite the launch engine. Without it they would be stranded on the Moon so he repaired it by wedging his ball-point pen into the hole. Luckily it worked.

5. Neil Armstrong's descent to the Moon didn't go to plan. At that time nobody knew that gravity on the Moon varies and as a result their calculated trajectory was incorrect.

6. Astronaut Michael Collins remained in the Command Module (in orbit 60 miles above the moon) while Aldrin and Armstrong travelled to the Moon, making him the most isolated person in the Universe, further from Earth than any other person.

10 things you never knew about space travel

1. Early designs for the lunar module included seats – but they were taken out to save space, on the logic that with no gravity the astronauts wouldn't be able to sit down anyway. Only after astronauts started spending longer on the Moon did they fit hammocks inside the lunar module.

2. The lunar module was almost balloon-like, with wafer thin walls, so astronauts could almost poke their finger through the walls.

3. The landings were timed precisely to ensure sunlight was at the right angle, to aid visibility for landing, to make sure the photos were good and to ensure they'd get a good view of the Earth.

4. Cryogenic tanks aboard the Apollo Moonship are so well insulated that ice-cubes placed inside would take eight years to melt.

5. The power of one Saturn V was enough to place all previously launched US spacecrafts in orbit.

6. Saturn V is about as big as a rocket can get and would crumble under its own weight if any bigger – Saturn V was 16 inches shorter when fully fuelled than she was when empty.

7. To get Saturn V off the ground, 5,800,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen, 3,500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen, 2,000,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 87,000 gallons of liquid helium were required.

8. 94 per cent of the fuel carried by the Saturn V was used to get just 100 miles above Earth. The other 6% took the Apollo space ship nearly 250,000 miles to the Moon, landed it, relaunched and returned the crew home.

9. Saturn V has 6 million components. Even if they achieved NASA's target 99.9 per cent success, they might expect 6,000 components to fail on a good launch.

10. At 363ft/111m tall, the Saturn V was as tall as St Paul's Cathedral and was assembled upright, inside the biggest shed in the world – NASA's Vertical Assembly Building.