Apparently in the 90s, America was being prepped for the introduction of gays in outer space, at least as reoccurring fictional characters on Roddenberry's Star Trek. According to ThatGayMovie.com, Roddenberry loved the idea, but Paramount didn't want to offend any Trekkies.
Fast forward two decades, and all fiction aside, gay pioneer Frank Kameny has become the first gay man to live in outer space, at least by name.
A Canadian amateur astronomer who discovered several asteroids has named one of them after Kameny, who died last year in Washington at age 86.
According to reports, astronomer Gary Billings read Kameny's bio, which included his life-long advocacy for LGBT rights, and decided to submit a petition to the Paris-based International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. to name the asteroid after Kameny.
The governing bodies agreed and Minor Planet 40463, located in the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, has been named Frankkameny.
Through a telescope, "Frank would show up as a little dot that moves between two points," Richard "Doc" Kinne, an astronomical technologist at the American Association of Variable Star Observers in Cambridge, Mass., said in an interview, as reported by The Washington Post.
Kameny had been trained as a variable star astronomer in the 1950s before joining the Civil Rights movement full time. Now his name will live on in the universe forever.
Fast forward two decades, and all fiction aside, gay pioneer Frank Kameny has become the first gay man to live in outer space, at least by name.
A Canadian amateur astronomer who discovered several asteroids has named one of them after Kameny, who died last year in Washington at age 86.
According to reports, astronomer Gary Billings read Kameny's bio, which included his life-long advocacy for LGBT rights, and decided to submit a petition to the Paris-based International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. to name the asteroid after Kameny.
The governing bodies agreed and Minor Planet 40463, located in the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, has been named Frankkameny.
Through a telescope, "Frank would show up as a little dot that moves between two points," Richard "Doc" Kinne, an astronomical technologist at the American Association of Variable Star Observers in Cambridge, Mass., said in an interview, as reported by The Washington Post.
Kameny had been trained as a variable star astronomer in the 1950s before joining the Civil Rights movement full time. Now his name will live on in the universe forever.
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