Ed Dwight's enormous jump took sixty years. With Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, Dwight became the first Black person to complete astronaut training and made space travel history on Sunday. Dwight, who is a few months older than William Shatner was on his mission, became the oldest person to go to space as a result of the delay, according to NPR. President Kennedy supported Dwight's candidacy as an astronaut in the early 1960s, but NASA never selected him for a trip, according to the AP. Dwight went on to become a well-known sculptor who created likenesses of historical African American people after leaving the Air Force and the space program.
Following a flawless takeoff from a launch site in West Texas, six people were on board the suborbital, ten-minute ride on Sunday. It passed through the space limit, the 330,000-foot Kármán line, and experienced brief weightlessness. When Dwight landed close to the launch site, he was ecstatic and shook his fists in the air before emerging from the capsule. Wonderful! An encounter that changed his life," he stated. "Everyone needs to do this!" According to the Wall Street Journal, his son Chris had described the voyage as "an absolutely fantastic bookend to the space era of his life." "It is about time."
Following a flawless takeoff from a launch site in West Texas, six people were on board the suborbital, ten-minute ride on Sunday. It passed through the space limit, the 330,000-foot Kármán line, and experienced brief weightlessness. When Dwight landed close to the launch site, he was ecstatic and shook his fists in the air before emerging from the capsule. Wonderful! An encounter that changed his life," he stated. "Everyone needs to do this!" According to the Wall Street Journal, his son Chris had described the voyage as "an absolutely fantastic bookend to the space era of his life." "It is about time."
