I was bumbling around in the categories one day, and I came across the Space Flight Disasters category. Being something of a space geek, I was intrigued, so I clicked on it to see how many disasters were included. I was surprised to see that only the Challenger and Columbia were listed. Don't get me wrong: both affected me deeply, but they weren't the only times that astronauts or cosmonauts have died. So I made up a category for Apollo 1, and then, since Roger Chaffee was already on WikiTree, I built a profile for Gus Grissom and linked him to the category, and then I built out a quick family tree for him. (He's still unconnected, so if anybody wants to build that tree out further, go for it!) The last time I checked, nobody had added Ed White.
I'm not sure how many people have to die for an event to qualify as a disaster, but other fatal flights have been Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11, and SpaceShip 2. The Brazilian rocket VLS-1 blew up on the pad and killed 21 scientists and engineers, which definitely qualifies as a disaster in my mind, even though none of them actually went into (or, as far as I know, were even planning to go into) space.
So anyway, having added a tartan background image to a bunch of my ancestors' profiles, and really liking the effect, I thought it would be cool to be able to put a background image on profiles for astronauts, to set them apart from the run of the mill. In Gus' case, I could have used the Apollo 1 mission patch, but he had done so much before that event that it felt wrong to use that, because it felt to me that it would be implying that the only important thing he ever did was die in that accident. I thought, briefly, about using a tiled NASA logo, but then I thought it would be better to use something that would be applicable to all astronauts, no matter what space agency they were with. So, I hit upon the idea of looking for a tileable starfield image, and I finally got around to looking for one. I found one which is freely shareable and put it up on a free-space profile.
So, if you're working on a profile for an astronaut (or, I suppose, an astronomer), and you want to add a starfield background, put "Tileable_Background_Images.jpg" into the "Background Image" box and see if you like it.
Greg
