by Hours after his historic first trip to space, 90-year-old Ed Dwight sat among three retired Black NASA astronauts who thanked him for creating a path for them to enter orbit and asked his trip aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard NS-25 “justice” spacecraft.
More than six decades after President John F. Kennedy tapped him to become the first Black astronaut candidate for the elite Aerospace Research Pilot School — the Air Force program from which NASA astronauts are selected — Dwight finally graduated Sunday what he was denied. all those years ago.
When he returned to Earth as the oldest person to ever travel to space, he was greeted by retired NASA astronauts and Space Shuttle veterans Leland Melvin, Charles Bolden and Bernard Harris who told him that their achievements were only possible only by standing on his shoulder. .
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“Now we have justice to fill the history books with Ed Dwight flying into space and getting his justice,” Melvin, who flew two space missions aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, told ABC News.
Despite being appointed by Kennedy to the Aerospace Research Pilot School and recommended by the Air Force, Dwight was not selected for NASA’s astronaut corps after Kennedy’s assassination.
After entering private life in 1966, Dwight spent ten years as an entrepreneur before becoming a sculptor of Black historical figures. He told ABC News that he admitted after leaving the Air Force, he felt unable to achieve his goal of becoming an astronaut.
“Every time I’ve started a project, I’ve finished it. And here this thing came along and it was a big mysterious question mark sitting there,” Dwight said. “And so, the tendency of people in a situation like that is to blow it off and say you don’t want it.”
But he said that as more and more supporters and fans encouraged him to seize the opportunity, he began to “analyze the need to give up in front of my brain.”
“I found that I needed that because I needed to finish it,” Dwight said.
Dwight was one of six people who went to space from the remote Texas desert on Sunday aboard the New Shepard. Dwight’s flight was sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.
A retired Air Force captain, Dwight told ABC News that it wasn’t the weightlessness of the zero G-force center of gravity he was most interested in, saying he had plenty of experience during his time training in the 1960s.
“I wanted to look outside,” said Dwight. “Some people told me that I respect that because of the choice to be weightless for 10 minutes or something like that or look, it was determined to look that hell was much more important to me because I’m a curious person . “
He said, “When you see something as magnanimous as this Earth and you really pay attention to it, it’s mind-boggling. I mean, it shakes up your head.”
Dwight said the experience was life-changing and suggested that all elected leaders of Congress be required to see Earth from space.
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“If they flew around this globe two or three times they would see the need of this planet [being] united and see what they are losing by deleting it,” said Dwight.
Harris, who flew on two NASA Space Shuttle missions, said as he watched Dwight finally reach his goal, he thought about what doors might have opened earlier for Black Americans if Dwight would have been an astronaut six decades ago.
“I met being an astronaut watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when I was 13 years old,” said Harris. “What if Ed had flown? What a difference it would have made in my life because, during that time, I never saw anyone who looked like me.”
Turning to Dwight sitting next to him, Harris said, “And so, to see you take off, we all cried. And we appreciate what you did today and what you did for us years ago then.”
Bolden, who flew on four Space Shuttle missions before becoming the first Black Administrator of NASA, said Dwight saw going to space “full of holes.”
“We really needed this,” Bolden said, calling Dwight an example to young people that any goal can be achieved with “hard work.”
When ABC News asked him what was left on his bucket list, Dwight laughed and said his space trip was like “getting a taste of honey.”
“I want a whole jar of that,” said Dwight. “I want to go into orbit. That’s what I want to do.”
Black astronauts say 1st trip to space was ‘justice’ Ed Dwight, 90, appeared first on abcnews.go.com
