Late last month, I spent a weekend in New York at the spectacular TWA Hotel at JFK for an event called Mission 60s. The venues looks and feels like it’s right out of the Space Age with amazing architecture and deign. It also features rotary phones, typewrites and mucous froth time. 

I wanted to attend because I knew my friend Rod Roddenberry would be there. I also hung out with Dr. Sian Proctor — geoscientist, artist, pilot of Inspiration4, the first all-civilian orbital mission, and one of the featured cast members in The Eagle Obsession. 

I also caught up with my friends Michael Okuda and Doug Drexler, two men who spent decades designing what the future looks like on a screen. I was honored to met actor Robert Picardo, who took one of the most difficult character premises in television — a holographic doctor with no physical body and a poor bedside manner — and brought it to life with depth, humanity, and humor.

And I finally met John Knoll,  the lead visual effects maestro at Industrial Light & Magic. I have been a fan of his approach to visual effects for years, and getting to talk to him about it in person was a genuine thrill.

Then there was Keir Dullea.

He signed an autograph for me. He played Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey — the astronaut who shuts down HAL and goes through the Star Gate alone. Bowman is one of my biggest heroes. That character got into my head as a kid and never left. Standing in front of the man who played him is not something I expected to be doing at this point in my life.

The best thing I saw all weekend was a discussion with Ed Dwight.

In 1961, Dwight was selected as the first Black astronaut candidate in the United States. He never flew. He left the program, became a sculptor, and spent the next six decades doing that instead. In 2024, at the age of ninety, he finally went to space on a Blue Origin flight. Sixty-three years after he was first told he was going.

Hearing him talk about it in person was moving. I’m still thinking about it.

The Eagle Obsession comes to video on demand via Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube Movies on November 24.