Guion Bluford: First Black Man In Space — Part 2
Back in the 1960’s, President John F. Kennedy appointed the first black to the astronaut program. Two years later, Captain Edward Dwight joined the program but left in 1966. While the Air Force claimed that Dwight failed to complete his training, the Captain said he quit under pressure and claimed the program didn’t want black involvement. When Vice-President Lyndon Johnson became president after President Kennedy died, he appointed another black, Bob Lawrence, to the astronaut program. However, Lawrence died in a plan crash shortly after the appointment.
Meanwhile, the Challenger, standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, prepared for take-off with five astronauts abroad. One of the astronauts was Lt. Colonel Guion S. Bluford, Jr., who was the first black American in space. Challenger’s twin solid-fuel rocket boosters lifted the craft in a blaze of fire and smoke. Climbing until it was 180 miles above the earth, the shuttle went smoothly into orbit. But Bluford wasn’t thinking about being a black man in space, but simply a lucky human being.
When he received his doctorate in 1978, he felt that NASA was the best place to learn new things about the aerospace engineering. It would be the ideal place to combine his flying and engineering interests, but he didn’t feel that he could get into the program. In that year, 8,878 people had applied. Only a few weeks later NASA called to offer work at the Johnson Space Flight Center. Just 35 men and women participated in the astronaut program that year. Guy was one of three blacks accepted into the program. As an astronaut candidate he studied for a year. He worked on the mechanical arm(?) that is used to move payloads in and out of a spacecraft’s cargo bay and on experiments in the space lab program.
At the end of the year, the candidates were full-fledged astronauts and eligible to fly in the space shuttle. For the next few years, Guy spent time flying in “shuttle simulators”. These were machines that looked and felt like a space shuttle. By this time, America’s interests in space had changed. The space program had developed tremendously during the 60’s and 70’s. The first men had landed on the moon. Skylab, an earth orbiting space station, was busy with space exploration. 1973, Pioneer 10 passed through the asteroid belt to become the first manmade object to escape the solar system. In 1974, Pioneer 11 took pictures of Jupiter’s moons. Because of the huge costs, when rockets could only make one flight, the U.S. was reluctant to put more money into the program. So, in 1972, NASA begins to develop space shuttles that were reusable spaceships. The first space shuttle, Columbia, was launched in 1981. By 1983, Challenger, America’s second shuttle, went into operation. On its 3rd flight and the 7th mission for the shuttle program, Bluford was aboard. He was hesitant to take the job, as he didn’t want to be singled out because of his skin color. He went in as a mission specialist. His job included conducting scientific experiments and launching satellites.
Sending the first black American into space was an historic event. Many famous black people went to Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch the launching including Wilt Chamberlain and Lionel Hampton. Bluford’s parents both died before their famous son’s dream came true. As Challenger lifted off in a blaze of flames, the world was not thinking about the races of the five crewmen aboard, but rather the achievements they were experiencing.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 4:11 am and is filed under Mission History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
