Man who wanted to be the first African in space killed in road accident
A South African man who had won a competition to fly on a suborbital tourist flight has been killed in a motorcycle accident.
Mandla Maseko, 30, was killed on Saturday, a family statement says.
In 2013, the South African Air Force member beat one million entrants to win one of 23 places at a space academy in the US. Nicknamed Afronaut and Spaceboy, Maseko described himself as a typical township boy from Pretoria.
…He had spent a week at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida doing tests in preparation for an hour-long sub-orbital flight, originally scheduled for 2015. Challenges included skydiving to earth from 10,000 feet and a test charmingly known as the “vomit comet”.
But the chance never came to go into space. The company organising the flight, XCOR Aerospace, went bankrupt in 2017, news site Space.com reported.
All around a terrible tragedy.
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A South African man who had won a competition to fly on a suborbital tourist flight has been killed in a motorcycle accident.
Mandla Maseko, 30, was killed on Saturday, a family statement says.
In 2013, the South African Air Force member beat one million entrants to win one of 23 places at a space academy in the US. Nicknamed Afronaut and Spaceboy, Maseko described himself as a typical township boy from Pretoria.
…He had spent a week at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida doing tests in preparation for an hour-long sub-orbital flight, originally scheduled for 2015. Challenges included skydiving to earth from 10,000 feet and a test charmingly known as the “vomit comet”.
But the chance never came to go into space. The company organising the flight, XCOR Aerospace, went bankrupt in 2017, news site Space.com reported.
All around a terrible tragedy.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Your support is even more essential to me because I keep this site free from advertisements and do not participate in corrupt social media companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. I depend wholly on the direct support of my readers.
You can provide that support to Behind The Black with a contribution via Patreon or PayPal. To use Patreon, go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. For PayPal click one of the following buttons:
If Patreon or Paypal don't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
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