South Africa is joined by the rest of the world in mourning Mandla Maseko, who would have been the first black African in space.
Mandla Maseko, also known as ‘’Spaceboy’ or the Afronaut, died in a motorbike accident that occurred on Saturday, according to a statement issued by his family. He was 30.
He had secured the one in a million chance to travel to outer space after responding to a promotion that was being run by AXE, a subsidiary of the international conglomerate Unilever. The promo was to give 23 seats on a suborbital plane built by the American company XCOR.
Millions applied. Elimination activities included taking participants on loop the loop plane manoeuvres, quickly landing the plane and giving them written tests to answer. Maseko made it to the top 3, and was shortlisted to go to Orlando, the over 100 other participants from other nations.
They spent a gruelling week there, doing more aptitude tests, combat training, and zero-gravity flights. At the end of the week, the final 23 were announced, and Spaceboy had secured a seat that would otherwise have cost him some $100,000.
The trip was to be done in 2015, and Maseko already knew what to do: take along a South African flag, a Ladysmith Black Mambazo song, play the national anthem, call home from space, and think of a powerful line to rival Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Or just be memorable enough.
XCOR
But it doesn’t seem like they would have had the chance. XCOR Aerospace, the company commissioned by Unilever to fly the 23 to space, never got around to building a working prototype for the Lynx, the suborbital plane.
In 2016, a year after the aborted launch, XCOR was firing its staff, and in the following year, it filed for bankruptcy.
Even if he never got to space, that Mandla Maseko, the son of a cleaner and a tool maker, the product of a Pretorian township, would beat a million others for such a coveted spot was an inspiration to the everyday people in South Africa’s townships and beyond.
Africa Global News Publication
