Former Test Pilot Ed Dwight & Retired NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin in talk to The Inside Reel about path, inspiration, education and possibility in regards to their new documentary film for National Geographic: “The Space Race”.
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TVTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Back in the day, they were saying that blacks
00:14 are too ignorant to be flying in space.
00:16 I'm smitten to turn up there doing all these wonderful
00:19 things.
00:20 Black history is American history.
00:22 We forget it at our peril.
00:27 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:30 This kind of story is all about education, inspiration,
00:35 but also recognizing the past and its flaws
00:39 and what we can do with the future.
00:42 Ed, I first want to talk to you about--
00:43 thank you for all your service, but also,
00:47 after all that, the positive outlook you can maintain.
00:51 Can you talk about the importance of history,
00:53 not forgetting it, but also the hard work?
00:56 Because you put in so much hard work
00:59 when you were first starting, and now to this point.
01:02 Can you talk about that and that perspective
01:05 from your point of view?
01:07 Yes.
01:09 I didn't start out life to be a history maker.
01:15 I'm a book guy.
01:16 And when I was a kid, I got a library
01:18 I recorded at four years old.
01:19 And I bathed myself in books.
01:21 And I got a huge collection of books as astronomical to me.
01:24 And I'm kind of a book guy and a history guy.
01:27 But I never looked at myself as a history maker,
01:30 because that's totally different things.
01:34 But I think my mother did an incredible job of preparation.
01:43 She got me in school at two years old.
01:45 I started school at two.
01:47 And this whole thing was an educative process,
01:51 exposing me to all kind of new and fascinating things.
01:55 And some of them were art-based, and some of them
01:58 were based in science and lunar cycles.
02:07 So I was gifted to have that kind of mother that
02:10 could prepare me for all the things
02:14 that I was in the end up being challenged with later on.
02:18 And so life for me in this history thing, like I said,
02:23 I never thought of myself as a history maker.
02:27 But the good news is I was presented
02:29 with some of the most incredible challenges,
02:32 like going to pilot training and becoming an Air Force
02:38 officer and a test pilot and getting
02:41 my degree in aeronautical engineering
02:43 and all those things.
02:45 And all those things are building blocks.
02:48 And I didn't realize at that time
02:49 that they were building blocks for a history maker.
02:53 There's Victor in space.
03:03 When I think back on this really tough time in our country,
03:06 I think about what I was feeling down here on Earth.
03:10 And I felt numb.
03:14 I could only imagine what my brother Victor Glover was
03:17 feeling up there.
03:19 Hey, everyone.
03:20 How you doing?
03:23 Been a tough few days.
03:27 And I keep talking about that juxtaposition
03:30 of doing this most incredible, audacious, heroic thing.
03:35 And we get people up to space.
03:38 And really hard stuff.
03:41 Rocket science is pretty hard.
03:44 But civil rights in our country, it ain't rocket science.
03:52 But there are a lot of destiny kind of things
03:54 that come into your space plane.
03:58 In Leland's case, he had an offer to become an astronaut
04:05 and turned it down.
04:08 You know, later on, became a history maker himself.
04:11 The same thing happened to me.
04:13 I was doing really well at what I was doing.
04:17 It wasn't big history.
04:19 It was this local history of me being a pilot
04:22 and being a successful Air Force officer.
04:24 But then I got this offer to be this astronaut guy.
04:28 And I said, that's crazy.
04:29 That's the last thing in the world I want to do.
04:32 But finally, when my mother turned me into this thing,
04:36 she forced me to become a history maker by saying,
04:41 yes, I'll do this.
04:43 And she gave me some good reasons.
04:46 And it had to do with the overall growth
04:50 and commitments to science and leading
04:56 that to the growth of the overall Black community.
04:59 Because there was no such thing as an astronaut.
05:03 We didn't know what astronauts or pilots in the Black community
05:06 were.
05:07 And for me to step off that ledge and say, yeah,
05:09 I'll do this.
05:11 And then all of a sudden, the good news
05:13 is I was well equipped to handle it.
05:17 This thing could have been a massive failure
05:21 if I wasn't ready to accept it and if I was not
05:24 able to excel at it.
05:26 And the fact that I excelled at it opened more doors.
05:29 And the whole thing was a big act of history
05:34 as I look back on it now.
05:36 So that's my take on the history part of it.
05:40 And thank God it was there.
05:43 And this movie kind of packages it all and puts it together.
05:48 And it forces me to be a history maker and a historical icon
05:54 that somebody can follow and inspire.
05:57 And that's what's important about what Leland has done here
06:00 with this movie.
06:08 For me, this is like deja vu.
06:11 It's frustrating and angering.
06:17 And you look back and you say, I cannot believe
06:20 that all the things that we work for were going backwards.
06:24 I was watching the news thinking about that could have been me.
06:35 That's the gravity of this situation, right?
06:38 Could have been any of us.
06:39 Now, Leland, can you sort of talk about-- thank you
06:45 very much, Ed.
06:45 Thank you very much for saying that.
06:47 Because you were saying something, Ed and Leland,
06:50 I'd like you to talk about presence of mind.
06:53 Because presence of mind, you have to have that.
06:55 You have to have the ability, but you
06:57 have to have the perspective.
06:58 But beyond that, Lisa was telling me,
07:00 it's also what she saw.
07:01 It's about the power of possibility.
07:03 We might be fated to do something,
07:05 but it's about the possibility of being able to do it.
07:08 I mean, look at Artemis II.
07:10 Look what Victor is doing with Artemis II.
07:11 Could you talk about that and looking at that in your path
07:14 as you push forward on Atlantis and in the space shuttle
07:18 program and in your education?
07:20 Because the education and giving that perspective
07:22 to younger people is what will keep moving this forward.
07:26 Yeah, Tim, that's a great question.
07:28 And I think a lot of my resilience
07:32 came from my mother reading to me every night,
07:33 Little Engine That Could and Curious George.
07:36 Because Curious George always had the man in the yellow hat,
07:39 little engine hat, I think I can, I think I can.
07:41 And I was a little guy growing up,
07:43 so I didn't have a growth spurt until much later.
07:45 So I was always trying to be that little engine.
07:48 But I think when you look back on history,
07:51 you look at what Ed has done to let people see what is possible
07:56 and then wrapping that into a ball of mission possible.
08:00 What is the mission possible as a kid
08:02 that you want to do with your life?
08:04 What are the tools that you need?
08:05 What are the skill sets that you need to do this?
08:08 And if you think about Ed's skill set, he was an engineer,
08:11 he was a post captain in the Air Force,
08:13 he was a test pilot, and then an artist.
08:16 So not getting down, I mean, I know
08:20 Ed was sad when things didn't go the way he wanted them to,
08:23 but he pivoted with empathy, with grace, and with love.
08:27 And he became this person who, what is it, Ed?
08:29 152, 172 sculptures around the country, around the world.
08:36 Growing up, I loved the space program.
08:39 But nobody doing that stuff looked like me.
08:45 Very few people today even have a clue
08:50 about Black people's contribution
08:52 to human space flight.
08:54 That was the only Black aerospace.
08:56 The only Black NASA.
08:57 The only Black offshore.
08:58 The first Black astronaut.
09:00 Because they weren't written in history books.
09:02 Yeah, so that legacy alone is going
09:05 to allow people to see from an enslaved person in Texas
09:10 to the first Black astronaut in Texas.
09:13 Because of that journey, that legacy, that resilience
09:17 to get to that point.
09:18 And my story, I mean, I lost my hearing in a training accident
09:22 in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.
09:24 Went completely deaf, and they told me
09:26 I would never fly in space.
09:28 And my friends and community pulled around me and said,
09:31 look, you got this.
09:33 Don't give up.
09:34 Keep going.
09:35 Hearing only came back in one ear.
09:37 And they still flew me twice.
09:39 Because I didn't give up.
09:41 I kept going.
09:41 So that Harriet Tubman resilience
09:46 that Ed learned about at 40 years old.
09:50 I mean, really, it gives you that ability
09:52 to say what is possible.
09:54 If he can do it as an enslaved person,
09:57 multiple sorties back and forth to Maryland
10:00 and back and getting people--
10:02 I have no reason why I can't do this.
10:04 I can do anything.
10:06 I can go to the moon or Mars.
10:08 [LAUGHTER]
10:09 If she can do that, I can go to Mars.
10:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:15 Three of us all recognized that one of us
10:17 would be the first Black astronaut.
10:21 I would have made it to the moon.
10:22 One small step for man.
10:24 They were not going to let that happen.
10:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:27 Representation becomes critically important to help
10:30 us keep moving down that path.
10:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:36 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:43 (whooshing)