Madeleine Shepherd

Alba ad Astra - Scotland's forgotten history of space exploration Madeleine Shepherd

Introductions by Ken MacLeod and Pippa Goldschmidt




The first human being in space was Russian. The first man on the Moon was American. However, the space race is a marathon, not a sprint. Startling evidence suggests that the longest rocket flight ever made was a classified Scottish project.




Alba ad Astra is a collaborative thought experiment celebrating Scotland's industrial and technological heritage. Documents, photographs and testimonials have been collected by Madeleine Shepherd and contributors such as Andrew J. Wilson and Kirsti Wishart. These fragments reveal a secret part of Scotland's history - or a new mythology.




Contributors: Ken MacLeod, Andrew J. Wilson, Pippa Goldschmidt, Gavin Inglis, Kirsti Wishart, Andrew C. Ferguson and Fergus Currie