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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
“It’s A Life-changing Experience, Everybody Needs To Do This.”
Astronaut Ed Dwight on going into space at 90
This week in history the first Black NASA astronaut candidate selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 went into space on a Blue Origin flight.
It only took him 90 years to get there, making him the groundbreaking oldest human to travel to space and back.
But back in the 1960s, Dwight was passed over for NASA’s Astronaut Corps despite completing training and receiving an Air Force recommendation. Surely, he thought his opportunity to travel to space and see Earth from a distance was over.
Blue Origin change everything. According a CNN article, Dwight was ecstatic about his trip to space, “I thought I didn’t need it in my life. But I lied. I really, really did need it,” he says.
This was the first successful Blue Origin flight in two years as there was a fire during launch of the rocket in September 2022. Prior to the fire, six commercial flights had successfully launched and returned to earth with some of the world’s most influential and famous people on board including Jeff Bezos, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan.
