Ed Dwight: A space pioneer who eventually became an astronaut

Ed Dwight could have been the only black astronaut in the 1960s – but politics got in the way. In 2024, at the age of 90, he finally got the chance to go into orbit.

Humanity has entered a new era of space tourism. For a minimum of $450,000 (£360,000), people with deep pockets can earn the title of “astronaut” after a short sub-orbital flight to the edge of space and back and up to 10 minutes experiencing weightlessness above Earth.

On these near-space flights, currently offered by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, there’s usually a crew member whose name and story grab the headlines — and often a free ride.

In 2021, on Blue Origin’s first passenger flight, was the 82-year-old aviator and former member of Mercury 13. Wally Funk. A few months later, it was the actor and former Star Trek captain William Shatner. In May, on Blue Origin’s seventh short flight from Earth to the edge of space and back, it was Ed Dwight.

Dwight is an acclaimed sculptor whose work can be seen in galleries and as public monuments throughout the United States. Like Shatner, he was 90 years old, but it wasn’t just his age or his sculptures that deserved attention. It was also his background as America’s first black astronaut candidate.

“There are people who only know him as an artist,” Antonio Peronace said.

Executive Director of Space for Humanitynon-profit charity that paid for his flight and wants to increase access to space for all.

“Then all of a sudden they learn, wait a second, you have this whole other chapter of your life? So I think it was eye-opening for a lot of people to learn that of his background.”

This background is truly eye-opening.

Dwight was an aeronautical engineer, a captain in the US Air Force and at pilot test school in 1961 when he received a letter from the Pentagon, authorized by President John F Kennedy, asking if he would like to become the first astronaut With color. After initially dismissing it as a joke, he agreed. Only later did Dwight discover that this was a political move to appeal to black voters.

“The president went to NASA and said, ‘Are you going to train this guy?’ And Nasa says, ‘No, because you’re going to destroy our program, you’re going to destroy our tax base, and we’re never going to get another dime from the public if you put a black on this program now,'” Dwight said. BBC 5 Live in 2019.

“The reputation of the first seven astronauts was that these guys were superheroes,” he said, referring to the famous Mercury Seven selected in 1958. “If you put a black person or a woman in the middle of that mix too soon , these Guys would be ordinary people again in the eyes of the world, especially the tax paying public, so the president had to invent another space program – a military space program.

Therefore, Dwight underwent astronaut training as part of the military’s Guided Orbiting Laboratory program. When the Kennedy administration announced it had chosen America’s first black astronaut, Dwight appeared on magazine covers and traveled the country giving speeches.

After training at Edwards Air Force Base, he was placed eighth as a contender for NASA’s Astronaut Group 3 in October 1963. Only the top seven were selected as the famous Mercury Seven. A month later, Dwight’s astronaut career was effectively over.

“The day the president was killed, my life changed,” Dwight said. “November 22, 1963 was literally the end of our project.”

He was offered several posts abroad after the president’s assassination, but stayed in the Air Force for a few more years. His chances of going into space, however, had died with Kennedy.

A black American astronaut wouldn’t go into space until 20 years later, when Guion “Guy” Bluford—also an aerospace engineer and USAF pilot—flew with NASA. Bluford was part of the 35-person astronaut class selected in 1978 for the Space Shuttle program. It was the first time that the astronauts were not all white, male or from a military background.

2023 documentary film, The Space Racetells the experiences of black American astronauts, including Bluford and Dwight, and the injustices and racism many of them faced at the time.

“Dwight completed experimental test pilot and aerospace research courses at Edwards Air Force Base and so he had all the qualifications that his white peers had,” one of the film’s directors, Lisa Cortez, told me. The Space Boffins Podcast.

“Ed Dwight was an incredibly qualified black person who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cortes said, “As he always says, if he had come around 20 years later, he would have enough social progress in the US. would have supported his visibility and his right to be truly considered and embraced as an astronaut candidate.”

The film shows how Dwight is not weighed down by the grief of being left out. After all, he went on to have a wildly successful second career as a sculptor telling black American history. His pieces include civil rights activists Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, and bronze and granite Detroit statues celebrating Underground railwaythe name for the network of secret routes and safe houses established during the early 19th century to help slaves escape from southern states.

Space for Humanity, whose donations have put people in space through Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, accepts applications to fly into space from anyone and often wins “firsts” — sending the first woman of Mexican descent and the first Egyptian in space. Dwight, however, did not apply for his space flight.

“He was in our eyes,” said Space for Humanity’s Peronace. Occasionally we choose an individual who does not go through the application process – like Ed Dwight – where we know their story has been and or will be very impactful to individuals.

The impact Dwight’s story had on others was clear to see as his space flight was followed on the ground by NASA’s first black administrator, former astronaut Charlie Bolden Jr., as well as current astronaut of NASA’s Victor Glover, who was recently announced as the pilot of the Artemis II mission around the Moon at the end of 2025.

Dwight had applied to NASA several times after completing his military astronaut training, but was not selected. Those were different times, and NASA has long honored Dwight’s role in spaceflight, and today’s diverse astronaut corps reflects modern America.

“We knew we were helping to realize this chapter of a space dream,” Peronace said, “because we want to rekindle the idea of ​​breaking barriers at that altitude. Not giving up, showing courage in the face of adversity. , and Ed Dwight embodies all of them.”

Dwight will now become an ambassador for Space for Humanity. “You can’t even count the people he can inspire and that’s what we’re in it for.”

The best quote, however, comes from Dwight himself after his space flight, over 60 years after completing his astronaut training.

“I thought I didn’t need this in my life,” he said, “but I was lying. I really did.”