Oliver Pritchett: Music in space? Good idea The singer Sarah Brightman is threatening to treat us to a concert from space. She has booked a round trip on a Russian Soyuz flight to the International Space Station and has reportedly paid out £30 million for the privilege. An album is bound to come out of it. I am still uncertain about whether or not to be pleased about this news. On the plus side, it might finally settle the question about whether there is life out there on other planets. If there are little green men, they will almost certainly complain about the noise. The soprano's trip in space is bound to be copied. Rock stars, boy bands, garage groups and heavy metal outfits will soon be blasting off and orbiting the earth with all the rest of the space junk and discarded bits of rocket. There will be intense competition between them all to see who can have the first gig on Mars. It's certainly a nice thought that the enthusiastic and ever-hopeful rock band which performs in an upper room in the pub down the road could soon be 250 miles above the Earth's surface or preparing to splash down in a remote part of some ocean. This could be the salvation of space exploration, which has been going through a bad patch. The shuttle, with psychedelic decoration, will be setting out every day with a new band, or solo artist, to be met by thousands of yelling fans floating in space. Nasa will be busy keeping the album charts up to date and Simon Cowell can have a distant planet all to himself. Yes, I've decided I am pleased with this development. It will be hard on astronomers, though. When they see something twinkling out there in the night sky, they won't know if they have discovered a new star or if it is just a sequin on Sir Elton John's jacket.