First, Quietly — on this day — quiet machine studio

Guion "Guy" Bluford, NASA astronaut portrait. NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

First, Quietly

On this day in 1983 — Guion "Guy" Bluford rode the Space Shuttle Challenger into orbit on a rare night launch, becoming the first African American in space. He would have preferred less fuss.

At 2:32 in the morning on August 30, 1983, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Florida on the first night launch of the shuttle program, turning the coast briefly to daylight. Aboard, as a mission specialist, was Guion "Guy" Bluford — and when Challenger reached orbit, he became the first African American in space. He was forty, born in Philadelphia on November 22, 1942, and he had taken a demanding route to that seat.

Guion Bluford training in weightlessness aboard a KC-135 aircraft

Bluford training in weightlessness aboard a KC-135. NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bluford was that rare combination, an engineer and a fighter pilot. He earned a degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State, flew 144 combat missions in Vietnam, and then went back to school for a doctorate in aerospace engineering. In 1978 NASA chose him among just thirty-five people, from roughly ten thousand applicants, for the first shuttle astronaut class — the first class to include women and people of color, the same group that had sent Sally Ride into orbit two months before his flight.

What set Bluford apart was how he carried the milestone: he tried to shrink it. He said more than once that he would have preferred to be the second African American in space rather than the first — to be measured as an astronaut and an engineer rather than as a symbol, and to let the achievement pass without a spotlight. On STS-8 he did the job: operating systems, deploying a satellite, running experiments, and coming home on the program’s first night landing.

Guion Bluford exercising on a treadmill aboard the Space Shuttle

Bluford exercising aboard the Space Shuttle. NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

He flew four shuttle missions in all — in 1983, 1985, 1991, and 1992 — logging hundreds of hours in orbit before leaving NASA in 1993 for a career in engineering. He had, by then, made the point he wanted to make, which was no point at all beyond competence.

Bluford’s quiet insistence on being an engineer first is its own argument about merit and design: the work should speak, and a barrier is best dismantled by simply, capably, doing the job on the far side of it. He didn’t want a spotlight. He wanted a mission. He got one, in the middle of the night, and a country crossed a line it should have crossed long before.