In a nightmare year, Victor Glover is on the verge of living his dream

Victor Glover says he doesn’t want attention. Not for This, at least. And I believe him.

“I wish there was nothing to talk about, but it’s not the world we live in,” admitted the NASA astronaut in a recent interview.

The period we live in is the year 2020, an age that sees the United States once again torn apart by racial tensions, animated by the killing of George Floyd in May and exacerbated by an extraordinarily tense presidential election.

In the midst of it all, Glover is on the verge of living out his dream. Selected to become an astronaut in 2013, after training like hell for seven years, he landed a coveted spot on the first Crew Dragon operational mission on the International Space Station. As one of the four astronauts on the Crew-1 mission, which launches Saturday night, Glover is helping get America back into space.

Also, Vic Glover is Black.

So, with his flight, Glover is not only making history as the United States returns to the human spaceflight business, but he will become the first black person to live on the space station. It seems a shocking fact. The space station has now been inhabited for more than 20 years, after all, and 126 humans lived there during that time. But none were black. Six African American astronauts visited the space station during shuttle missions, but none remained on board as long-term crew members.

When asked about this, Glover tends to deviate. The four members of the Crew-1 mission have adopted the motto “all for one,” he explains. “Our crew has intentionally decided to do certain things a certain way, so that we can tell that message about teamwork and commitment to excellence, working together with differences,” he said.

It’s not that Glover hasn’t thought about America’s racial problems. But astronauts are strongly encouraged to only share positive messages with the public. Going against this suggestion can have negative consequences for flight opportunities. Yet, in the wake of Floyd’s murder, Glover was clearly struggling with these problems.

“My heart is low, my head is level and my faith is high. So much to process, if you’re struggling, that’s fine. I see you, I’m you”, wrote on Twitter at the beginning of June. A follower suggested, perhaps, that Glover should stay in the space on his Twitter account. “Not really,” Glover replied. “Remember who is making room. People are. As we face extreme weather conditions and pandemic diseases, we will understand and overcome racism and bigotry so that we can make room together and safely. Thank you for asking.”

Pressed a bit more during the interview, Glover said one of the reasons he hasn’t spoken publicly about these issues – beyond a few Twitter comments – is that he hasn’t yet gone into space. He would rather talk about the things he has achieved rather than the things he has yet to achieve.

“I’d like to have another conversation with you in six months, because I’m trying to stay away from the bittersweet discussion of being the first black astronaut assigned to a long-duration mission to the space station,” he said. “I want to go do it first, I want to go do my job, so I think the best thing I can do, better than anything I could say, is to go do my job and do it right, and then come back and tell it to people. And I think this work, by its very nature, is inspiring and hopefully offers people something to join and celebrate together. And if we can do that, when we come back we’ll have a lot of amazing things to talk about. “

So the Crew-1 mission isn’t about Glover. But if it’s a success and Glover’s story of going from downtown to the Test Pilot School in space helps grow America, he’s good at it.

Glover will also become the first black astronaut to go to space in nearly a decade. Alvin Drew is the latest black aviator, having served as a mission specialist on STS-133 in 2011. He doesn’t believe racism has contributed to the Gulf drought that has lasted for nearly ten years. Rather, Drew said, it primarily reflects the fact that the black astronauts who remained in the body after the space shuttle program ended were juniors and, due to limited seats on Soyuz vehicles, had to wait a long time.

However, he eagerly anticipates Glover’s flight to the space station. It is important for black boys and girls to see people like them flying into space, living there and contributing to the exploration of the cosmos. “You want them to see that there is still this opportunity,” Drew said. “This is what I’m looking forward to.”

The next interval won’t be that long. NASA has already announced that another black astronaut, Jeannette Epps, will fly to the International Space Station aboard the first operational mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. That flight could take place in 2021 but will most likely slip into 2022 due to ongoing software issues with the Boeing capsule.