The First Female Commercial Astronaut Spaceship Pilot is also a Poet
Dr Sian Proctor’s biggest accomplishment is bigger than piloting a spaceship to space: She brought our humanity.
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With Dr Sian Proctor as its pilot, the Inspiration4’s SpaceX Crew Dragon carried her and her fellow crew mates to 585-km away from Earth — over 150 km further away than the International Space Station and the furthest any human beings have been away from the planet since 1999.
The way Dr Sian Proctor’s astronaut selection for 2021’s Inspiration4 three-day to space is popularly described is that she won her seat. Her win was in fact the remarkable and public accomplishing of a lifetime pursuit — to go to space, to be an astronaut, to fully be herself when she gets there — and it was an accomplishment that became realized through a global selection process alongside hundreds of other contenders. And in that setting, a seasoned and well-prepared Dr Proctor shined.
Her tweeted candidate video garnered nearly 100k views in three days. (Part of the process required “virality”.) For her candidate video statement, Dr Proctor included her poem, “My Space2Inspire”:
It was her reciting her own poem that won Proctor her seat in Inspiration4.
Even without the power of that poem and her representing of Prosperity her foundational element of the Inspiration4 cornerstones–along with Leadership (mission commander Jared Isaacman), Hope (medical officer Hayley Arceneaux), and Generosity (payload specialist Chris Sembroski)–Dr Proctor brought with her over over a decade of astronaut training such as being a NASA astronaut selectee finalist in 2009. Not the least of which, Dr Proctor had one undeniably significant astronaut skill under her belt:
Trained pilot.
In the past, from the Mercury-era on up to the Space Shuttle program, having training as a pilot was a noted advantage on any astronaut application. Knowing this, Proctor obtained her pilot’s license in 2006. She continued this commitment to piloting and aviation serving as a major in the Civil Air Patrol as the aerospace education officer for its Arizona wing. So in 2021, readying as pilot of Inspiration4, she was ready to train on a Cessna CitationJet CJ3 and, under the tutelage of veteran jet pilot and mission commander Isaacman, fly a MiG-29.
Indeed, a background in science and PhD, a reputation for professionalism and excellence in not one but several fields and vocations, experience with publicity and being on camera, and her well-earned acclaim in the world’s astronaut community, Proctor was always the perfect choice as a cornerstone of the 4-person Inspiration4 crew. History shows this to be the case. (For evidence of this, look no further than the Netflix mini-series Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space. Watching is to re-live the triumph and victory of this crew of remarkable individuals–Isaacman, Arceneaux, Sembroski, and Proctor–who all live, work, and play together as well as only the most famous astronaut crews in history while simultaneously raising $250 million dollars for St Jude to defeat cancer in children.)
Yet what made Dr Proctor–professor, pilot, science communicator–the perfect choice for all of us here on Earth was her artist’s soul, her human heart, and her conscientious connection with this our planet. Or as Dr Proctor herself calls it, AfroGaia.
For when Dr Sian Proctor flew to space and orbited the planet Earth for three days in 2021, becoming
- the first female commercial astronauut spacecraft pilot
- the first spacecraft pilot who is an African-American woman
…she took it upon herself to make a point of looking out at the universe and report back to us through the eyes, hands, and words, of a poet, in turn also becoming…
- the first artist to go to space who is Black
…and for that she is more than an astronaut. She is a planetary treasure.
Listen to Dr Sian Proctor reciting her poem “Earthlight” while bathed in the sun’s Earth-reflected light — earthlight — while in witness to the genuine grandeur of everything from the most precious vantage point available to us as human beings:
This is a person who not only became the magnitude of professional necessary to be capable of getting to space, support a team in excellence, and represent the hopes and dreams of people who she’s never met; Dr Sian Proctor, astronaut, artist, and poet, is a person who did all that and not only kept their soul, they celebrated Her.
Searchlight
I’ve learned to shine
a gold so brilliant it
beckons me to have faith in
my impatient journey to believe
the best is still to come. A stellar life
beyond a golden age cast full of restless
dreams. Dreams illuminating relics brought to
life by a flickering photon of hope. I will search
until that golden ticket shines bright through
the dark stellar night. There it is, just
beyond the light.Do you see it?
The Whale Dancer
Can you feel the dreams
of her cosmic ocean delight?
All those possibilities
set with her blinded sight.
A truth seeker among the stars
conjuring spirits through her light.
A dark beauty manifested within
the whale dances with her tonight.
Suited
Did I pick you or did you pick me?
Does it even matter as long as it fits?
Suited to survive the harsh realities of life in time and space
It’s the armor neded to thrive in a world that hates
Fabricated to stretch across flesh and bone
Coveted by many but only gifted to one
A first skin never to be shed
I flex under the weight,
Good thing it fits!
Imagine! In order to achieve accomplishments such as piloting a commercial spaceship above the planet for three days from a distance further than the International Space Station, imagine the sacrifices that get to be made.
It takes a rare person to make this kind of commitment and these kind of sacrifices. But even so, after sixty years of astronauts going to space and their stories and legends, of course we can imagine them.
Now imaging what it takes to hit the higher mark, the mark that can only be reached by first being so rooted to who we are and where we come from that we remember what we were doing when we get where we are going .
Fortunately for us all, Dr Sian Proctor did it for us first. And turning back towards every Earthling and AfroGaian looking up she beckons, follow me.
“The First Female Commercial Astronaut Spaceship Pilot is also a Poet”
Attribution
Writer: PR HORSE (M. Mongo)
Photos: Inspiration4 (J. Kraus)
Art: Dr Sian Proctor