ONE GIANT LEAP

DR. SIAN PROCTOR MAKES HISTORY AS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO PILOT A SPACECRAFT

By John Altdorfer

Dr. Sian Proctor will tell you that space is not the final frontier.

After all, the 1992 Edinboro alum circled the Earth 47 times as part of the SpaceX Inspiration4 crew last September. So, she’s kind of an expert.

Then there’s this fact. She made that journey in a place where no Black woman had gone before — the pilot’s seat of a spacecraft.

Still, after three days above Earth, Proctor said there are plenty more places she wants to see on this jumbo spaceship we call home.

“Oh, I’m an explorer,” Proctor said, sitting with her feet up on a chair in a room that doubles as an art studio in her Phoenix home. “Space is the ultimate form of exploration. But our planet is a wonderful place to explore. And I still have a whole world to see — whether I’m above it, on it or under it.”

No one’s ever checked, but exploring the heavens and earth just might be part of Proctor’s DNA.

In 1969, her father, a Sperry Univac engineer, kept tabs on the Apollo 11 moon mission at a NASA tracking station in Guam. Afterward the crew met Edward Proctor, and Neil Armstrong — the mission pilot — wrote him a thank-you note. Nearly eight and half months after Armstrong kicked up some moon dust, baby Sian Proctor joined the ranks of future space pilots.

On her way to the stars, Proctor’s earthly flight pattern passed through astronaut. Getting glasses as a teenager in New York grounded the fighter pilot plan. Then in 2009, she was a finalist to join the NASA Astronaut Program but didn’t make the ultimate cut. Disappointed? Of course, she was. But explorers never quit.

Edinboro, which wasn’t at the top of her college list.

“My brother Chris was already at Edinboro. And who wants to go to school with the older brother who always tormented you,” she said with a laugh. Despite her reluctance, Proctor honored the wishes of her dad, who was terminally ill at the time, and landed at Edinboro to study environmental science.

With master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University already on her resume, Proctor earned a pilot license and SCUBA certification. She wrote a cookbook about how to eat like a Martian, based on her experience of living in a NASA-sponsored Red Planet environment for four months. She even laced up her ice skates and learned to play hockey. All the while, she taught geology, sustainability and planetary science at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix.

Then, in February 2021, she learned about the opportunity to become one of the Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight. Like any good explorer, she understood the challenges ahead of her.

“In the end, it was the best decision,” she said. “My first day on campus, Chris knocked on my door and said, ‘Let’s be friends.’ He really took me under his wing. We went to parties together. We ran track together. We’re still close today, and he lives about an hour away.”

Part of her explorer dream was to fly fighter jets and join NASA as an

“I looked at who applied. I saw that some had millions of followers on YouTube and Twitter,” she said, “and hardly anyone followed me.”

She thought her age, gender and skin color might be obstacles, too. At 51, she would be the oldest woman ever to pilot a spacecraft. Since Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin first orbited the Earth in 1961, only three women guided a vessel through the cosmos during the more than 350 “manned” missions in the following six decades. None was a Black female. Boosted by a confidence instilled by her parents that she could accomplish anything, Proctor applied.

“I wasn’t going to talk myself out of it,” she said, her smile fading for a moment. “So I left it up to someone else to determine if I was qualified.”

Passing the audition was the easy part. The real challenge? Living up to the dreams of her father; her mother, Gloria; and all those whose shoulders she felt she was standing on as she reached for the stars. People like Mae Jamison, the first Black female astronaut. She felt the obligation to represent every Black man, woman and child — past, present and future.

“Representing Black people matters because we need to work 200 percent all the time just to prove to the people who are the gatekeepers that we belong,” Proctor said. “We’re judged by a different standard and watched for the ‘failure moment.’ I remember when I finished grad school, one professor told me, ‘We didn’t really think you were going to make it.’ What got me through things like that was my dad telling me that if I worked hard enough — with grit and tenacity — that I would achieve my dreams.”

Proctor made plenty of dreams come true — for herself and others. Though both parents died before her flight, they traveled with her in spirit as part of the many personal items she took onboard — including that note from Neil Armstrong to her dad.

Her three days in space proved, well, out of this world. Zero gravity. Phone calls from Tom Cruise and Bono. Cold pizza (SpaceX founder Elon Musk promises a microwave on the next flight). Sixteen sunrises and sunsets every day. “Earthlight” instead of moonlight. Then there’s the view that never got old — even after 47 trips along the same route.

From an earthling’s perspective, the Inspiration4 capsule orbited the planet upside down. To mix sports imagery, picture a badminton shuttlecock with the red rubbery part facing a basketball that looks like earth. Now this is where things get — as Proctor said — “trippy.” No matter where the capsule was in its orbit, the Earth was always above the red rubbery part — whether Inspiration was “above” the North Pole or “under” the South Pole.

“You go into the cupola” — the red part that’s actually a glass dome — “and your brain is freaking out because you feel like you’re right side up,” Proctor said. “But you’re actually inverted. But you don’t notice because there’s no orientation in space” until you look at your location in relation to the controls, chairs and other fixed items in the craft.

While there’s no up or down in space, Proctor has a good sense of direction of where she’s going back here on Earth.

An international motivational speaker, she has appeared in three educational television shows, including “The Colony Season 2” on The Discovery Channel and “Genius by Stephen Hawking” on PBS. She’s currently featured on the Science Channel show “Strange Evidence,” where she has served as the science demonstration expert since 2017.

Proctor is a huge fan of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” but she’s set on creating a JEDI space to help the next generation of space explorers stand on her shoulders. Instead of building a “Star Wars” fleet of warriors, Proctor wants to foster a world of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion — or JEDI — so that young people can achieve their dreams.

While JEDI is a universal concept, Proctor plans to launch Space2Inspire — her own program to help others grow and thrive creatively.

“We all have our own space where we can inspire others to increase their knowledge or unleash their creativity,” she said. “My space might be different than yours. But it’s what we do with our space and how we inspire others that matters.”

Whether she’s orbiting with the Inspiration4 or flying solo, Proctor will always keep her eyes on the skies and so many other frontiers.