Earlier this week, I was interviewed by a Russian TV crew about Apple. They were a bit surly and aggressive, not like polished, ingratiating TV people here in the U.S.
They kept asking strange questions about Steve Jobs, as is if he were a crooked oligarch. “Vy does Steve Joybs vant to be dictator? Vy does he vant to dominate ze vorld?”
Then the producer, who looked like an aging Chechen war criminal, told me that Jobs tried to get a ride on the doomed Challenger Space Shuttle mission in 1986, instead of the school teacher, Christa McAuliffe. He tried to buy his way on, he said.
I was pretty surprised. I’d never heard this before. When I asked where he got this story, he said this was “information from Russia,” and kinda winked, like it was a KGB leak or something. But he acted as though it was fact.
If the story had dated from 2001, I would have been more inclined to believe it. That’s when the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket. However, in the early ’80s, NASA launched a program to put private citizens into space called the Space Flight Participation Program. The Teacher in Space Project, which put poor McAuliffe on the flight, was an outgrowth of that.
I throw this out because it’s a fun story, nothing else. Has anyone else heard anything like it? Could it be true?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
20 responses to “Steve Jobs Wanted To Be an Astronaut, Nearly Flew On Challenger [Crazy Rumors]”
Leander good day I will be presenting a seminar on the book of his “The head of Steve Jobs” but I need information about you. who has studied school, college who graduated companies that has worked, what led you to do that book is great to be able to give me the information I send to my E-mail: [email protected] now thank you.
those tv people probably were KGB agents planning to kill steve jobs
What American boy born in 1955 didn’t want to be an astronaut?
Let’s see… In 1986, a year after having been cut off at the knees by John Sculley, Jobs was scrambling to put together $10MM to buy George Lucas’ graphic division and get back in the business. So, yeah, right, it makes sense that he would completely turn away from that, and squander what time and capital he had at the time to take six months away from the quest to train to go into space.
Steve Jobs may be a lot of things, but he is not a playboy. Sounds like the vodka talking to me.
he was not ill the last years, he want just secretly training for a space vacation :D
He couldn’t possibly have done it. He was busy doctoring Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate while hiding the remaining JFK evidence and editing additional footage from the fake moon landing.
lols he look better as a developer not that
http://www.cultofmac.com
Wow great information you have provided over here regarding the steve and great person as an nature as per my knowledge…
gps fleet tracking
I’m Russian. Maybe we can speak English badly, but we can also read English :)
You should read more. Of cource it’s true. You can read it in:
Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, Part 1, Chapter 4
That is a crappy photoshop job on that Steve Jobs astronaut picture. At least try, next time.