Elijah Williams
Ed Dwight, a 90-year-old artist and former Air Force test pilot who was denied the chance to become the first African-American astronaut six decades ago, finally went to space on Sunday, realizing a cherished dream in a brief and exhilarating downward flight out of the lower atmosphere.
“Absolutely fantastic!” he exclaimed after the touchdown. “A life-changing experience. Everyone needs to do this!”
Blue Origin Webcast
Trapped in a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule, Dwight and five crewmates – a retired accountant, an Indian pilot and adventurer, a software engineer, a French businessman and a venture capitalist – took off from company owner Jeff Bezos’ launch. , in West Texas. spot just after 10:35 a.m. EDT, rising into a cloudless sky.
It was the company’s first New Shepard flight with passengers on board since reinforcement failure Two years ago, an unpiloted research flight was derailed. A mission repeated successful at the end of last year, also without crew on board, it paved the way for the resumption of passenger flights.
“There was a part of my career that wasn’t fully fulfilled, and here’s a great opportunity right now to fulfill that for self-satisfaction, yes,” Dwight said in a pre-release interview with CBS News. “But the most important thing is to satisfy all the wonderful people who have showered me with love all these years. Because it was these people who wanted me to go to space in the worst way possible. For them (that) is justice.”
During Sunday’s 10-minute suborbital flight, New Shepard’s hydrogen-powered single-stage rocket accelerated the crew capsule to more than 2,000 mph (3,300 km/h) and an altitude of 185,000 feet before releasing it to continue climbing. Weightless at that point, the crew reached an altitude of about 65 miles, a few miles above the internationally recognized “border” between the discernible atmosphere and space.
Blue Origin Webcast
Between shutting down the thruster and re-entering the capsule, the six crew members were able to break free and enjoy about three minutes of weightlessness, taking in spectacular views of the Earth below, as the spacecraft arced over the top of its trajectory. to descend into a parachute. assisted landing a few thousand meters from the launch pad.
“I didn’t think I needed this in my life,” Dwight said after exiting the pod. “I lied!”
One of the spacecraft’s three main parachutes failed to fully inflate, but the spacecraft was designed to land safely with just two parachutes, and the crew, all smiles after landing, obviously had no problems.
At 90 years and eight months, Dwight is the oldest person to fly in space, surpassing actor William Shatner by a few months, who was launched aboard a New Shepard at age 90 in 2021. Aviator Wally Funk, who joined Bezos on the company’s first piloted flight, occupies third place on the list of “most experienced” astronauts, flying at the age of 82.
A ticket to ride a New Shepard is believed to cost around US$500,000. Dwight’s position was sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity with support from the Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation. Jaison Robinson flew aboard a New Shepard in 2022.
It is believed that Dwight’s crewmates – venture capitalist Mason Angel, French businessman Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth Hess, retired accountant and adventurer Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura, a commercial airline pilot and the second Indian citizen flying in space – would have paid for their seats, but the real costs are not known.
Blue Origin
Before the launch, Dwight told CBS News that he was looking forward to seeing “the nice little round ball that we call Earth, which we’re not taking very good care of, by the way. But it allows you to get a different perspective.”
“I have a theory that I think every politician who runs for office in the United States of America needs to make at least three orbits around the Earth to be able to see what this place is all about,” he said. “And they would stop destroying it. That’s my wish. That would be a requirement for everyone running for political office at the national level.”
As NASA’s Mercury program intensified in the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy made it clear that he wanted an African American in the space agency’s astronaut corps. Dwight received approval and trained at the Edwards Air Force Base Aerospace Research Pilot School, passing through the initial round of training.
But NASA did not select him as an astronaut and he resigned from the Air Force in 1966 with the rank of captain. After stints in the private sector, Dwight earned a master of fine arts degree in sculpture, focusing on pioneers in black history. He owns and operates Ed Dwight Studios in Denver.
“I’ve had, you know, 60 years to sit down and think about every part of this,” he told CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan. “But the reason I have the slightest interest in going to space now is that I have a group of fans who have followed me since 1964, for generations, and the fan mail has never stopped.
“The more I thought about it, what better way to satisfy my fans for the things they’ve been asking me for the last 60 years? And the opportunity to fly into space arose.”
Blue Origin Webcast
He said African-American astronaut Leland Melvin first came up with the idea while the two were working on “The Space Race,” a documentary about the history of black astronauts and engineers in NASA’s space program.
“This all happened in a relatively short period of time,” Dwight said. “We were working on ‘Space Race’ and traveled around the country doing film festivals. We were engaged in Q&A (and) how would you like to go up?” Melvin had contacts at Blue Origin, he added, “so it just evolved.”
Blue Origin was on a month-to-month launch pace in September 2022 when an uncrewed New Shepard carrying 36 experiments suffered a booster failure a minute after liftoff, triggering an automatic abort. The capsule was propelled away from the booster and landed normally a few minutes later.
The miscarriage was attributed to the failure of the BE-3 engine nozzle that powers the New Shepard rocket. After an extensive investigation, Blue Origin modified the rocket to avoid any similar malfunctions and successfully launched another unpiloted research flight in December 2023, paving the way for the resumption of passenger flights.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard is competing with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to carry space tourists, professional astronauts and others on suborbital spaceflights. Virgin Galactic has launched 55 passengers on 11 flights of the company’s Unity space plane so far, while Blue Origin has launched 38 men and women on seven flights.
While Virgin focuses exclusively on suborbital flights, Blue Origin is also building a lunar module and a partially reusable orbital-class rocket — the New Glenn — to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters.
