Astronauts, as we know, are the rarest of people. Ron McNair was the rarest of astronauts.
McNair was just the second African American to fly in space, doing so in February 1984, and he was a talented artist. A jazz musician. By taking a curved soprano saxophone aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-41B mission that year, he became the first person to play a musical instrument in space.
Four decades ago, McNair was on the cusp of creating another piece of music history, by performing a sax solo that would’ve resonated around the world.
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Jean-Michel Jarre had planned the out-of-this world performance, which would’ve seen McNair play the part from the final track on the French electronic composer’s eighth album, 1986’s Rendez-Vous.
Sadly, the performance never happened. On Jan. 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff, the Challenger shuttle exploded. None of the seven crew members survived.
“Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle tragedy,” writes Jarre in a social post. “My heart is with all the families and loved ones who continue to carry the weight of this loss.
“I pay special tribute to my dear friend Ron McNair – astronaut, musician, and pioneer – who was due to perform a saxophone solo live from space as part of my Houston concert.”
As a salute to McNair, the album’s sixth and last piece is entitled “Last Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece) – Challenger.”
Later on April 5, 1986, Jarre paid tribute to McNair and his colleagues on the space shuttle with “Rendez-vous Houston: A City in Concert,” an open-air concert that celebrated the city’s 150th anniversary and NASA’s 25th, and featured a state-of-the art laser show which turned the city’s skyscrapers into art installations.
The concert set a Guinness World Record for the largest concert audience (1.5 million), and was later released as a live album.
A South Carolina native, McNair experienced segregation as a child. That didn’t rob him of chasing his dreams. In 1976, he completed a PhD in physics from MIT, he earned a 5th-degree black belt in karate, and mastered the sax. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2004, and his pioneering work is preserved with The MIT Black History Project and through The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, established to encourage underrepresented students to pursue doctoral studies.
His musicianship lives on, too.
“That performance never took place,” Jarre writes, “but Ron’s Piece lives on. His heartbeat is in the music, echoing into eternity.”
