Tomorrow’s Tech, Today: Innovation That Moves Us Forward
- Guion "Guy" Bluford flew on Challenger in 1983, logged over 700 spaceflight hours, managed orbital experiments and launched satellites.
- Ron McNair rose from segregated schools, earned an engineering PhD from MIT, inspired many, and was lost in the Challenger accident 1986.
- Frederick Gregory served as a test pilot, first African-American to command a spaceflight in 1989, later Acting NASA Administrator.
You may have heard of Black astronauts like Mae Jemison, Charles Bolden or Victor Glover, but do you know about the first African-American astronauts or what they contributed to NASA’s space program?
Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory were the first three African-Americans in space. They were also NASA classmates in its famous “Class of 1978” – the first class to train women as astronauts (Sally Ride) as well as the first Asian-American man (Ellison Onizuka).
Guy Bluford graduated from Penn State and joined the Air Force in 1964 to become a pilot. Bluford was deployed to Vietnam and flew over 140 combat missions. After Vietnam, Bluford remained in the Air Force, using his skills to train future fighter pilots. In the 1970s, Bluford earned advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and eventually became chief of the Air Force’s aerospace laboratory.
Some years later, Bluford wanted to do even more to contribute to flight, science and aerospace. Upon hearing about NASA’s efforts to recruit and train new astronauts, he applied and got accepted to the program.
In the Penn State tribute video to Bluford, there are images of some of the rigorous “Top Gun”-style training he and his classmates went through to be deemed space-ready by NASA.
On August 30, 1983, Bluford got his chance to head into space. It was the third flight for the Orbiter Challenger and the first mission with a night launch and night landing. Because Bluford was making history as the first person of African ancestry to travel in space, the night of the launch, there was a crowd people waiting outside in the rain to watch.
Listening to Bluford talk about the whole thing himself is pretty special, especially his two revelations: 1) when they listened back to the audiotapes of the launch, they realized one of the astronauts was giggling all the way up into orbit. It was Bluford. 2) the first thing he saw once in orbit was Africa over the horizon. While adjusting to zero gravity, two of the flight crew members threw up. Guy was okay and quite comfortable in space.
Guy, though happy to have been “the first,” he really just wanted to make a contribution to the program. Bluford logged over 700 hours in space shuttle program, managed orbital experiments, and launched satellites from orbit. In 2023, NASA celebrated the 40th anniversary of Bluford’s first mission and his legacy.
Ron McNair came from rural poverty in Lake City, SC, attended segregated schools but was a naturally gregarious and spirited young man with an appetite for learning. McNair was at his local Lake City library one day and found some math books he was eager to read. When he tried to check them out he was told he couldn’t.
Instead of walking out of the library empty-handed, McNair sat on the check-out desk refused to leave until he was allowed to borrow the books. Both the police and his parents were called – his one-young-man-protest was successful – he was allowed to check the books out. Decades later, this same library became the site for the Ron McNair Memorial and Ron McNair Center for Learning (pictured below).
McNair’s spirit, curiosity and perseverance led to him eventually earning an engineering PhD from MIT. The outgoing McNair was generally loved at NASA. He was known as a real motivator and leader and larger than life, despite his “small guy” status (height-wise).
This 5th degree black belt and accomplished jazz saxophonist became second African American in space on the Challenger, and he was part of the crew that tested allowing man himself to become a satellite in space.
McNair’s career as an astronaut, along with six others, was tragically cut short on January 28, 1986 when the Challenger exploded soon after launch. The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet. McNair has subsequently been honored by NASA for his contributions and service, as well as inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.
Frederick Gregory was an Air Force and Navy Test Pilot who had no lifelong dreams or intentions of ever becoming an astronaut. He went to the Air Force Academy and majored in engineering, but loved studying Classical English and had hopes of one day becoming a history professor.
But one day he saw an advertisement in Aviation Week for a new astronaut-training program at NASA. Then he saw promo materials featuring Nichelle Nichols – NASA had hired Lt. Uhuru from Star Trek to help recruit women and minorities to the space program – and in Gregory’s own words, she was the biggest motivator for him to apply.
Gregory’s first time in space happened to be on a classified military mission in regards to national security, so he couldn’t talk about it to family, friends or the press. He couldn’t even tell his wife where he was going for training and would have to disappear for weeks at a time.
What Gregory could talk about though, was what it was like to go up in space:
“When I launched the first time, I pretty much thought I knew the answer to everything, I thought I‘d seen everything, that this would just be a thrill ride for me. But when I got to orbit and… went from 3g to 0g and my arms floated and everything around me was floating, I had never anticipated anything like that. And when I looked out the window at the heavens and saw how orderly and how in harmony it was, I said to myself… God has put that there for me to see. And to look down at Earth and see the interaction and reactions of the water and the atmosphere and the dirt and the continents down there… My sense of where I came from went from Washington D.C. to the United States to the World. So I came back as a world citizen as opposed to a citizen from D.C., where I was born…”
Later in his NASA career, Gregory became the first African-American to command a space flight in November of 1989, and in 2005 became Acting Administrator for NASA. Two years ago, Gregory, now 85, was named to the National Aviation Hall of Fame Class of 2024.
Additional sources:
*[This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]
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