The Right Stuff Denied

Last weekend, something truly amazing happened.  An event which did get some press, but not enough. Granted, in an age when when devastating wars, an intense US election season cycle, and other ongoing issues are dominating the news, a 90-year old African-American man taking a suborbital tourist spaceflight seems like a nice enough human interest story, but this flight was something more. Former US Air Force test pilot and renowned artist Edward Joseph Dwight Jr. had been training to go into space as far back as 1961, when President Kennedy launched his ambitious plan to send men to the moon.

President Kennedy’s aspiring moonshot program was a direct response to the spaceflight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), who became the first human being in space, after his Vostok 1 capsule made an historic single orbit around the Earth in April of 1961.  NASA already had a team of seven astronauts preparing to fly into space with Project Mercury, but the Russians beat them by a month. The US would later fly Alan Shepard Jr and Virgil “Gus” Grissom in two successive suborbital flights, but an American astronaut wouldn’t orbit the Earth until John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Mercury mission in February of 1962.

Another man who was supposed to fly into space during that heady time was US Air Force test pilot Ed Dwight, who had the same basic qualifications as the other Mercury astronauts, and whom President Kennedy personally selected to fly, in what would’ve been a significant coup both for the US space program and for Civil Rights.  In a recent documentary made for Disney+ and NatGeo called “The Space Race” (a must-see), it’s revealed that Dwight was prevented from going into space not from any lack of skill, but from racial discrimination he faced within the ranks of the famed Edwards AF Base Test Pilot program in Mojave, California, under command of General Charles “Chuck” Yeager. Yes, the very same Yeager who broke the sound barrier aboard the X-1 back in 1947.  Take that as you will.

Now, with his recent spaceflight, Dwight has officially became the oldest man (and oldest African-American man) to fly in space, as he was just a few months older than Star Trek actor William Shatner was when he flew in October of 2021. Shatner himself was older than almost-Mercury astronaut Wally Funk, the 82-year old woman test pilot who flew in a Blue Origins capsule three months before Shatner (Funk is still the oldest woman to fly in space at the time of this writing). Like Dwight, Funk was originally selected to fly into space as well, only to face her own discrimination after NASA eliminated female test pilots from its Mercury program.

Understandably disappointed with not getting his space shot in the 1960s, Ed Dwight didn’t retreat into a pool of sorrow.  Instead, he pursued another ambition for which he had tremendous skill; fine art. Dwight devoted himself to making sculptures celebrating African-American heritage and culture, including vivid recreations of jazz legend Miles Davis, and of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as a memorial to the Underground Railroad.  Dwight’s works are on display in his current home of Denver, Colorado (eddwight.com). The Kansas native has also been commissioned to design a weather vane for the cupola of the Carriage House in Kansas City.  

Dwight’s long, prestigious art career would be achievement enough for most of us, but the former test pilot and astronaut candidate still had one unmet goal in his life; reaching outer space.  A goal that was, for many pilots—particularly during the Moon Race—the climax of a career. Dwight has said, “I thought I really didn’t need this in my life but now I need it in my life.”  Dwight’s life after the Air Force would see him pursuing and achieving his earlier artistic ambitions, rather on fixating on that space shot that didn’t happen.  

The artist-pilot would later watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon in 1969 with Apollo 11, and he would also see Guion “Guy” Bluford (b. 1942) became the first African-American to fly into space in 1983. Guy Bluford would be followed by the late Ron McNair (1950-1986), who was killed with the six other crew members of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 (which also carried Jewish astronaut Judith Resnik, 1949-1986).  As diversity slowly trickled into the ranks of NASA Astronaut Corps, the seemingly contented Dwight assumed he’d left his space ambitions behind. Or so he thought.

Note: Cuban cosmonaut Arnoldo Tamayo Méndez (b. 1942) would be the first man of African heritage to fly into space aboard Soyuz 38, which docked with the Soviet Salyut 6 space station in 1980.  Once again, the Soviets beat the Americans in a key Space First.

Enter Blue Origins, the private space tourism company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, and which has understandably come under fire by some for turning spaceflight into a billionaires’ private yacht club.  Blue Origin gave William Shatner his pro bono spaceflight in October of 2021, which, in turn, gave the company tremendous publicity for his participation.  However, the price of Ed Dwight’s Blue Origins flight was absorbed by a citizens’ spaceflight nonprofit called Space For Humanity, with additional support from the Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation.

Note: Space For Humanity also funded the mother-daughter suborbital spaceflight of Keisha Schahaff and her teen daughter Anastatia Mayers, aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceplane in 2023.

The other passengers aboard Ed Dwight’s flight, designated NS-25 (the 25th flight of the New Shepard spacecraft) included venture capitalist Mason Angel, French craft brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, entrepreneur Kenneth Hess, retired accountant Carol Schaller, and pilot Gopi Thotakura.  It’s probably safe to say the other passengers tickets were not pro bono or charitably funded.  Tickets for a Blue Origins suborbital spaceflight typically run anywhere from $1-$28 million a shot.  While Dwight has made a comfortable life for himself as an artist, it’s probably safe to say he doesn’t have that kind of cash burning a hole in his pocket. However, for karmic goodwill alone, Ed Dwight’s inclusion aboard NS-25 is priceless.

Rather than put into words the sheer exuberance of Ed Dwight’s experience, I prefer to let these videos and pics from his suborbital flight summarize that experience that I (and most people) will likely never know:

Joining the Ranks

Times have changed (though not always linearly) since Dwight was training to be an astronaut in the early 1960s, and other African-Americans have pursued astronaut careers, including four-time Shuttle veteran Charles Bolden Jr., who would later become a NASA administrator (the first Black man to hold that office) under President Obama. Bolden has said Dwight’s space shot “filled a hole.”  Space Shuttle veteran Leland Melvin, said “Now we have justice in getting the history books filled with Ed Dwight flying and getting his justice.”  Mae Jameson, the first African-American woman in space, flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. She would follow that real-life cosmic achievement with a cameo as a transporter chief aboard the fictional starship Enterprise-D in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” a year later (“Second Chances”).

I myself had the distinct pleasure of meeting astronaut Victor Glover back in 2015 at San Diego Comic Con, after a panel on the future of manned space travel (a panel that also included “The Martian” author Andy Weir). At this point in his career nine years ago, Glover was only recently accepted into NASA’s Astronaut Corp.  Since that brief meeting of ours, Glover’s logged 168 days—five and a half months—aboard the International Space Station, and has been selected as part of the crew of the future Artemis 2 mission.  Artemis 2, slated to launch in the fall of 2025, will be the first manned mission to enter lunar orbit since Apollo 17, back in 1972 (over 52 years ago, and four years before Victor Glover was born).  I have met a lot of celebrities over my decades of attending conventions, but meeting astronaut Victor Glover felt truly special.

At the end of the day, Ed Dwight’s spaceflight was about a lot more than simply giving an almost-astronaut a space shot; it was also about about correcting an injustice, however belatedly. NASA astronaut Bernard Harris, the first African-American astronaut to perform a spacewalk, said of Ed Dwight at a post-landing press conference, “I dreamed of being an astronaut by looking at Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when I was 13 years old. What if Ed had actually flown? What a difference it would have made in my life because during that time, I didn’t see anyone that looked like me.”

As for Ed Dwight? Now that he’s gotten a taste of spaceflight, he wants more. “I want a whole jar of that. I’d like to go into orbit. That’s what I’d like to do.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he succeeds, no matter his age.