How many more?

Who is this person and might he be the No. 201/202 to sign?

I posted elsewhere that I didn't want to jinx it, but I *might* have two more signatures to add in my "Space Shuttles: The First 20 Years" book. I was asked, essentially, how many more?

My answer: It depends.

My Shuttles: 20 Years book includes not just the astronauts who flew on that vehicle, but backups, prime crewmembers who didn't get to fly (e.g., their mission was canceled post-Challenger, for one), those that were trained, named, or selected but didn't fly (such as the majority of Manned Spaceflight Engineers), one astronaut who flew the Shuttle only for atmospheric tests and not into orbit (Fred Haise), an astronaut who wrote the foreword (Jim Lovell) and those who were active between the time of the first group of Shuttle astronauts (such as Alan Bean) to Group 19, the last class to fly Shuttle.

But to make things easy, there were 355 people who flew on the space shuttle. Of them, 33 are deceased whom I don't have (39 have died, including 14 from Mission 51L/Challenger and STS-107/Columbia.)

I just got my 200th Shuttle astronaut signature, so 355-33-200 = 122 space shuttle astronauts whom I don't have. That includes 41 people from countries outside the US (and whom I don't have much of a chance of getting unless they visit the US), so that leaves 81 Americans. At least three of them are non-signers, either because they don't sign at all or because of health issues.

In total, I have 213 signatures in my book. That includes three on separate pieces of paper, two of which I'm very confident I can get to sign my actual book. (And I met one of them a second time, too, but for some reason didn't think to get him to autograph my Shuttles:20 Years volume!)

That said, there's a larger pool of people when you count in backups, otherwise trained but didn't fly, or otherwise named but didn't fly, trained/named and waiting for a flight, including from countries outside the US.

My friend has a copy of "Who's Who in Space," and regularly travels for both work and personal reasons. I'm not sure how many names are in there - and it's a version that's 30 years old, and he's added signatures of various astronauts since then - but he has 589 autographs. He just emailed me the other day, in fact, and said it's a tough road trying to get 11 more for an even 600 - not that he'll stop then.

Anyway, tune in either late Sunday or sometime Monday to find out if I got word I was successful in adding two more autographs to my book. I also have a lead into one more, at an event in mid-April....