Owensboro native Jack Payne has an impressive resume, including retiring from the
Air Force and NASA. On Tuesday morning, he added a lifelong dream to that list by helping send former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and three others into space as the range safety officer for the launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.
Bezos was joined by his brother Mark Bezos, Mercury 13 astronaut candidate Wally Funk, and an 18-year old student for the first unpiloted suborbital flight with an all-civilian crew.
According to an NBC press release following the launch, “The Blue Origin accomplishment was the second suborbital flight in just nine days, with another led by Richard Branson having blasted off last week.”
As far as Payne’s pivotal role in the launch, friends and family watched proudly from Owensboro as the Discovery Channel played the events live.
“I was in tears the whole entire time. It was just so unbelievable. He absolutely has fulfilled his dream, and he’s my hero,” Payne’s sister Leah McDivitt said. “He always had the goal of putting someone into space. … It is pretty amazing to be a part of history like he is. Our family was all texting back and forth.”
When Payne graduated from Apollo High School in 1976, he started his education at the University of Kentucky before returning home to enlist in the Air Force.
“He is a linguistics guy and learned to speak Chinese,” McDivitt said. “He wanted to become a pilot but didn’t have good eyes so he couldn’t qualify to be a pilot, but he got to fly with them when he was in the Air Force.”
While his accomplishments include working with the first launch of the Titan IV/Centaur and being hired by NASA, his involvement with Blue Origin arguably became one of his greatest achievements.
As range safety officer, his role involves providing range safety oversight for flight operations and adhering to aviation safety standards.
“He basically had to make sure the coast was clear,” McDivitt said. “From launch to returning to earth was only 10 minutes. I am thrilled for him and for them. It’s pretty awesome that this whole process has worked out the way it has.”
For one more week, Payne’s day job is the Director of Mission Execution for the New Glenn Mission Operations team at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. In that role, he is a small part of the team that helped design and develop the New Glenn launch pad as well as create and develop the operations plans for the New Glenn launch system.
Payne said he planned to retire at the end of May, but he volunteered to work on the New Shepard First Human Flight mission to help with the higher workload for the Range Safety Officer for this mission and to be a part of the historic event. He delayed his retirement to July 30 in the hopes that the New Shepard program would accept his offer to help, which they ultimately did.
“This was the realization of a lifelong dream for him. Growing up, he was always so big into building model airplanes. In college, he and his friends launched rockets and loved catapulting things,” McDivitt said. “Seeing this kind of dream come true for him is pretty amazing to me.”
