The Patriot Post® · Profiles of Valor: CAPT Victor Glover (USN/NASA)
“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.” —George Washington (1790)
This week, as we celebrate Patriots’ Day in our nation’s 250th year, it is fitting to honor an American Patriot of the first order.
Amid all the rancorous MSM news churn about politics and policy, it is refreshing when we come together as a nation around a common good. Such was the case with the NASA launch of Artemis II on 1 April, crewed by Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Its 10-day mission was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and it was similar to Apollo 8 in 1968, which was the first crewed lunar mission of the Apollo program.
The Artemis II flight and that of Artemis III next year are test flights ahead of the next planned human lunar landing by Artemis IV in 2028, a mission to land astronauts near the Moon’s South Pole in order to establish a long-term base there.
This month’s mission to the dark side of the Moon was exciting for young people on our Patriot Post team and in our family.
For me, the Artemis II mission and all its coverage were remarkably similar to coverage of the Apollo missions almost 60 years ago. I’m the only person in our home office old enough to have watched coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon mission in July 1969, manned by Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins.
I vividly recall the 20 July images of the lunar module Eagle as it separated from the command module Columbia, where Collins remained in orbit 57 miles above the Moon’s surface. Then, as Armstrong and Aldrin prepared to land on the Moon, I remember hearing the live narration by CBS News veteran Walter Cronkite, and Armstrong’s announcement to the world: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” We then watched live as Armstrong exited the lunar module and stepped onto the Moon, declaring, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
What struck me most with the Artemis mission was the contrast between the technology of today’s flights and that of Apollo. We landed men on the Moon years before the age of supercomputer modeling and design, an analog mission and lunar module with the computing capacity of a hand-held calculator. We landed men on the Moon six times during the Apollo missions, with Apollo 1 and 13 demonstrating how dangerous they were. The astronauts of Apollo 1 — Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee — perished in a fire during a launch rehearsal in February 1967. And at 56 hours into the Apollo 13 mission, there was an oxygen tank explosion 180,000 nautical miles from Earth, requiring Command Pilot Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise, and the NASA team on the ground to devise a miraculous plan to safely return them to Earth. And they succeeded.
It was 16 years later, on 28 January 1986, that we were reminded again how dangerous space flight is, with the Challenger explosion 73 seconds after liftoff. That explosion killed Commander Dick Scobee, husband of my friend June, and six other crew members. Despite all the current technology and safety improvements, slipping “the surly bonds of earth,” as President Ronald Reagan put it on that awful day, remains a dangerous endeavor.
Seven years later in February of 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry, killing all seven astronauts on board.
With that NASA backdrop, let me tell you about Artemis Pilot Victor Glover, who got my attention for a couple of reasons during this mission.
Victor is a Pomona, California, native, born in that Los Angeles suburb in 1976. His mother, Cynthia, was a bookkeeper, and his father, Victor Sr., was a police officer. His father encouraged his interest in science and technology. His grandfather, an inspiration for Victor, was a Korean War Air Force Veteran.
He was a good student and athlete, graduating from Ontario High School in 1994, where he quarterbacked the school’s football team and was named 1994 Athlete of the Year. He then attended California Polytechnic State University, where he also played football, and received an engineering degree in 1999. After graduation, he joined the Navy, was commissioned as an ensign, and earned his wings at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2001.
Victor became a fighter pilot in the F/A-18C, first assigned to VMFAT-101 at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. He next served with VFA-34 at Naval Air Station Oceana and then flew missions off the USS John F. Kennedy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2006, he became a test pilot after being selected for the USAF Test Pilot School and graduated a year later. In 2011, he was deployed with VFA-195 flying missions in the Pacific theater from the USS George Washington.
Notably, at various points in his career, he earned three master’s degrees from different institutions: a Master of Science in flight test engineering from the USAF Air University; a Master of Science in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School; and a Master of Military Operational Art and Science from Air University. He also holds a space systems certification from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Victor entered NASA’s space program in June 2013, the year he was completing a military Legislative Fellowship in the U.S. Senate. He was selected to join seven other candidates in Astronaut Group 21 and graduated two years later. In 2018, he became one of NASA’s Commercial Crew astronauts, flying missions with SpaceX. Starting in November 2020, he spent 168 days aboard the International Space Station as an Expedition 64/65 flight engineer, completing four spacewalks totaling more than 26 hours EVA.
While on the ISS, he was selected for NASA’s Artemis Program and began training in 2021. He was tapped as pilot for the Artemis II mission in 2023, spending three years training for the mission this month.
You get the picture: Victor Glover is an accomplished pilot.
But his accomplishments run much deeper, as demonstrated by two conversations in the last two weeks.
The first was just ahead of the launch, when he was asked about his mission’s historic crew composition, notably the first woman astronaut and first black astronaut on a lunar mission.
His response was much bigger than the question:
I live in this dichotomy between happiness that a young woman can look at Christina [Koch] and just physicalize her passion or her interests … and that young, Brown boys and girls can look at me and go, “Hey, he looks like me, and he’s doing what?” And that’s great. I love that, but I also hope we are pushing the other direction that one day we don’t have to talk about these firsts, that one day, this is just — listen to this — that this is the human history. It’s about human history. It’s the story of humanity — not Black history, not women’s history — but that it becomes human history.
Fellow astronaut Christina Koch echoed Victor’s sentiment: “If there is something to celebrate, it’s that we are at a time when everyone gets to work equally hard to achieve that dream.”
Almost every MSM post on Artemis II ubiquitously makes reference to Glover as the “first Black astronaut to fly to the moon” and Koch as the “first woman astronaut to fly to the moon” because those talkingheads and scribes are so steeped in racial and gender division that they can’t let this be just “human history.”
Victor also gave a hint of what he would have to say from space a few days later: “Before I fly, I say a very short prayer…” He had earlier declared: “My career is fed by my faith. Anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray. Before I fly, every time I fly. Definitely when you go sit on top of a rocket ship. In the military, there’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.”
And accordingly, the second conversation that got my attention was Easter morning, when a CBS News reporter asked the crew what it was like to be so far from Earth on Easter.
Victor responded:
I’m glad you brought it up, though; I think these observances are important. You know, when I read the Bible, and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us, who were created, it’s — you have this amazing place, this spaceship, you guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship, really far from Earth. You’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos. Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special, but we’re the same distance from you, and I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe, you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.
Just before entering blackout on the dark side of the Moon, he added:
As we get close to the nearest point to the moon and farthest point from Earth, as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth — and that’s love. Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are. And He also, being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.
It was interesting to review how the Leftmedia platforms responded to Glover’s faithful remarks. Typical was this receptive response from the Los Angeles Times: “Artemis mission captures the spirit of unity America has needed.” Well, who do they think foments all the disunity across our nation?
Victor’s remarks were reminiscent of those from Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968. That night, Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders began an unplanned reading of the Creation story from Genesis heard around the world.
As the command module was rounding the Moon, the Apollo crew also caught the first glimpse ever of the “Earthrise.”
After the Artemis II splashdown, having accumulated a career total of 176 days in space, Victor’s first words were: “I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again because even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with — it’s too big to just be in one body.”
Profile of a faithful Patriot…
Victor remains a Navy Captain on loan to NASA, and I look forward to hearing about his next assignment.
He is a devoted husband to his college sweetheart, Dionna, and father to their four daughters, Genesis, Maya, Joia, and Corinne. They attend a Churches of Christ congregation in Friendswood, Texas.
CAPT Victor Glover: An ordinary man who has accomplished extraordinary things, by the Grace of God. His example of service to our nation is eternal.
Stand with us today. The deadline to meet this year’s
“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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