Short version: Ilan Ramon acted more traditionally Jewish in outer space, was killed on reentry to earth.
From Wikipedia (edited):
… He was the first spaceflight participant to request kosher food and mark the Sabbath.
The STS-107 mission ended abruptly when Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew died during re-entry, 16 minutes before the scheduled landing.
Ramon, whose mother and grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz, was asked by S. Isaac Mekel, director of development at the American Society for Yad Vashem, to take an item from Yad Vashem aboard STS-107. Ramon carried with him a pencil sketch, Moon Landscape, drawn by 16-year-old Petr Ginz, who was murdered in Auschwitz. Ramon also took with him a microfiche copy of the Torah given to him by Israeli president Moshe Katsav and a miniature Torah scroll (from the Holocaust) that was given to him by Prof. Yehoyachin Yosef, a Bergen Belsen survivor. Ramon asked the 1939 Club, a Holocaust survivor organization in Los Angeles, for a symbol of the Holocaust to take into outer space with him. A barbed wire mezuzah by the San Francisco artist Aimee Golant was selected. Ramon also took with him a dollar of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson…
Also:
Ramon’s miraculously recovered diary “contained the handwritten Sabbath prayer of the wine – the kiddush – which Ramon had written out in order to be the first Jew to recite the blessing in space.”
But why?
Surely not fear of death for a seasoned pilot, who volunteered for this mission as well. And no reason to assume this was all genuine (an obtuse Y. Leibowitz missed one opportunity long ago).
Why did Ramon go to such lengths, then?
I take him at his word, again quoting Wikipedia (before the first ellipses above):
Personally nonreligious, Ramon performed traditional observance while in orbit: “I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis.”
He thought he represented the Jewish people, who are mostly traditional. This was reciprocated in the genuine, universal wave of grief in Eretz Yisrael when he died (beyond the usual pain of a Jewish terror casualty and the like), including by my quasi-Neturei Karta friends.
So what? What are the two lessons you promised?
First of all, cheer up! Instead of the bad old days of “Yom Kippur Balls” we see even the likes of Leiberman and Lapid selling themselves by explaining how they, in fact, represent Judaism better (right or wrong is not the point).
Anti-Zionist perma-pessimists are wrong!
Secondly, there is some reason to hope an average Jewish king, even if not an ideal candidate (unlike a grasping, bare-voting-majority politician), seeing himself representing the nation as a whole (not to mention, “before God”!) would likely take a similar course of at-least external observance of some known mitzvos.
Restore monarchy now!