Hours after his historic first spaceflight, 90-year-old Ed Dwight sat among three retired Black NASA astronauts who thanked him for charting a path for them to enter orbit and described his journey aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-25 spacecraft. justice.”
More than six decades after President John F. Kennedy selected him as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate for the elite Aerospace Research Pilot School, the Air Force program through which NASA astronauts are selected, Dwight finally achieved what he was denied Sunday. all those years ago.
When he returned to Earth as the oldest human in space, he was greeted and applauded by retired NASA astronauts and Space Shuttle veterans Leland Melvin, Charles Bolden, and Bernard Harris, who told him that his successes would only be possible by standing on his shoulders. .
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“We now have justice that fills the history books with Ed Dwight flying into space and getting justice,” Melvin, who flew on two space missions aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, told ABC News.
Although he was appointed to the Aerospace Research Pilot School by Kennedy and recommended by the Air Force, Dwight was not selected for the NASA astronaut corps following the Kennedy assassination.
After entering private life in 1966, Dwight spent a decade as an entrepreneur before becoming a sculptor of historical Black figures. He told ABC News that he acknowledged that he was haunted by the feeling of not achieving his goal of becoming an astronaut after leaving the Air Force.
“Whenever I start a project, I finish it. And here comes this thing, leaving a big, mysterious question mark,” Dwight said. “And the human tendency in such a situation is to brush it off and say you don’t need it.”
But as more and more fans and fans encouraged him to take the opportunity, he said he began “analyzing the necessity of bringing this to the front of my mind.”
“I learned that I needed it because I needed to finish it,” Dwight said.
Dwight was one of six people who flew into space from the remote Texas desert aboard New Shepard on Sunday. Dwight’s flight was sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.
Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, told ABC News that it wasn’t the weightlessness resulting from zero G-force gravity that he was most interested in, saying he experienced plenty of it during his training in the 1960s.
“I wanted to look outside,” Dwight said. “A few people have told me that I respect that given the choice to look or be weightless for 10 minutes or something like that, it’s been determined that looking is much more important to me because I’m a curious person.”
He added, “When you see something as generous as this Earth and you really pay attention to it, it’s mind-blowing. I mean, it makes your head shake.”
Dwight said the experience was life-changing and suggested that every leader elected to Congress should see the Earth from space.
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“If they had flown around this world two or three times, they would have seen the necessity of this planet. [being] Dwight said, “unite and see what they lose by destroying it.”
Harris, who flew on two NASA Space Shuttle missions, said that as she watched Dwight finally achieve his goal, she thought about what doors might have opened sooner for Black Americans if Dwight had become an astronaut six decades ago.
“When I was 13, I dreamed of being an astronaut, looking at Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,” Harris said. “What if Ed had actually flown? What a difference it would have made in my life because I’ve never seen anyone that looked like me in that time.”
Harris turned to Dwight, who was sitting next to him, and said, “And we all cried when we saw you take off today. And we really appreciate what you did today, and what you did for us all those years ago.”
Bolden, who flew on four Space Shuttle missions before becoming NASA’s first Black Administrator, said seeing Dwight go to space “filled a void.”
“We really, really, really needed this,” Bolden said, calling Dwight an example to young people that any goal can be achieved with “determination.”
Asked by ABC News what’s left on his bucket list, Dwight laughed and said space travel was like “tasting honey.”
“I want a jar full of this,” Dwight said. “I’d like to go to orbit. That’s what I want to do.”
Black astronauts say 90-year-old Ed Dwight’s first space trip is ‘justice’ appeared first on abcnews.go.com