(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - The students have been making a difference all over the place for many years, and right here in our backyard.

(gentle music) - He's not just this, he's not just that.

Yes, he's America's first Black astronaut.

He's also the first astronaut, as far as I can tell, that had a PhD in chemistry.

- His childhood was completely marked by, "How can I be useful to others with what I have?"

(gentle music continues) - The races we participate in, all the energy the car uses comes from the sun.

- The students get to be exposed in real life environment.

It's a lot of stress, but when it's time to actually go to the competition, it's euphoria.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - In a nutshell, his childhood was completely marked by, "How can I be useful to others with what I have?"

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Narrator] It was the early 1950s in America.

Racial prejudice and segregation were often the rule in the workplace, at school, and in daily life.

It was in this time of conflict and change that 16-year-old Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. launched himself on a trajectory that would lead him to becoming America's first African American astronaut.

In 2025, Bradley University unveiled a statue of Robert Lawrence to recognize and honor his inspiring accomplishments as a Bradley student, scientist, and pioneer in space exploration.

Robert Lawrence was not a Peoria native, but the person he was to become took root here in Central Illinois.

Born in Chicago in 1935, young Robert Lawrence excelled from an early age.

He attended Haines Elementary School in the South Side of Chicago, loved chess, and built model airplanes.

He graduated from Englewood High School in the top 10% of his class.

In the high school yearbook, he said his ambition was to be useful to mankind.

- He was an avid lover of science and music.

Trained in classical piano.

From a young age, was very passionate about science, and we were told that every Christmas, he asked for the newest, most elaborate chemistry set that was available.

- [Narrator] Robert's athletic abilities as a runner won him a track scholarship at Bradley University.

He arrived on campus in 1952, pledged the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and joined the Air Force ROTC.

He chose chemistry as his major and became active in the student chapter of the American Chemical Society.

Some universities at that time would not admit African American students, or put up barriers to segregate them from the white student body and deny equal opportunities.

Bradley was different.

- I have to say that our department was sort of a microcosm of itself and very supportive of all students.

The faculty at that time just saw themselves as put there with a mission to help cultivate the potential of all the students regardless of race, gender, orientations.

- [Narrator] By all accounts, Robert saw himself as just another student pursuing his dreams.

- He was determined, and I think his family had raised both he and his sister to pursue their dreams, and even, you know, in face of adversity.

I mean, they were very humble people, but they would not back down from adversity.

- [Narrator] Robert graduated from Bradley in 1956 and became an Air Force instructor pilot, assigned to train airmen in the German Air Force.

When he returned to the United States, he married his high school sweetheart, Barbara Cress.

A son, Tracey, was born a year later.

The ambitious pilot and chemist continued to climb higher.

He was accepted into the graduate program at the Ohio State University, and in 1965, he earned his PhD in physical chemistry, one of the most difficult branches of chemistry.

- When he wrote the dedication for his PhD dissertation, dedicated his work to African Americans who, and I quote... - [Narrator] "Have spent their lives in the performance of menial tasks, struggling to overcome both natural and manmade problems of survival.

To such men and women, scientific investigation would've seemed a grand abstraction.

However, it has been their endeavors which have supplied both the wherewithal and motivation that initiated and helped sustain this effort."

- [Narrator] Graduate degree in hand, Robert became a senior pilot in the Air Force, and in 1967, he completed test pilot school.

That same year, he was selected to be part of the Air Force's Manned Orbital Laboratory program, a classified mission that would have used the Gemini spacecraft as part of an American space station.

Tragically, Robert was killed in a plane crash on December 8th, 1967, doing what he loved, training other pilots.

The Manned Orbital Laboratory was canceled in 1968, but all of the pilots in Robert's group later flew Space Shuttle missions.

Had he lived, its likely that Robert Lawrence would've gone into space.

NASA later said his accomplishments as a pilot and his flight maneuver data were critical to the Space Shuttle program.

- Since his tragic death, he's been honored in a number of ways, and his legacy lives on in many places.

He's part of a mural in the St. Louis Airport, where they recognize space, contributors to space, and scientists and astronauts.

He also has buildings and lecture halls named after him at ICC, Illinois State University, the Ohio State University, and at Bradley, we have a lecture hall named after him.

We have endowed scholarships.

We've been talking for a few years about how to recognize and truly honor him.

The decision to erect a statue in his likeness came about.

- I accepted this project because it was a fantastic opportunity to do something to honor an individual that has not gotten as much recognition as he should.

And the fact that the first Black astronaut graduated from Bradley University is one of the great examples of what Lydia Moss Bradley, you know, wanted our institution to do.

- [Narrator] The artist feels that the sculpture doesn't just honor an outstanding Bradley alum, it's also a gift to the community that he chose for his education.

- It says that we can do anything that we wanna do if we set our minds to it.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Major Lawrence's legacy is visible across the Bradley University campus.

Current chemistry students are surrounded by reminders of his brief, but consequential life.

- He's not just this, he's not just that.

Yes, he's America's first Black astronaut.

He's also the first astronaut, as far as I can tell, that had a PhD in chemistry.

But he had these intersections of other things in his life.

He was involved with a family, okay?

He had interest in track.

He was a Greek.

And there's all these different things that come together to make him who he was.

- [Narrator] Family and supporters lobbied to have Major Lawrence added to the Space Mirror Memorial at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

He was finally memorialized there on December 8th, 1997, 30 years after his tragic death.

- I'm enthusiastic about spreading the news about him, 'cause I think he's a great person.

I would've loved to have had him as a student in my research lab.

- I'm so inspired by the stories that I hear from those that knew him, that flew with him, that were what we would refer to as the right stuff pilots, that were white, having a Black guy as their, you know, best friend in a time when you couldn't eat together in a restaurant.

Like, it was a completely different world outside than it was inside of that tight knit group, and I think it's easy for someone in his position to pull out, you know, the ledger and all the wrongs that were done to him, but he didn't do that.

I don't believe that his death was for nothing, and I do believe he lived a full life in regards to just that quality that perhaps maybe it takes some of us 100 years to understand the things that he learned in 16 years.

- We've come a long way since the 1950s and '60s, but there's still a lot of racial strife and tension and a lot to be learned, and I think Major Lawrence's story is that we're all humans and we all have dreams and ambitions, and that we should be able to recognize and interact with each other in a respectful way, and help each other, lift each other up.

Having a statue there is sort of a day-to-day reminder of that, that why we're here, what our mission is, and what we can actually help our students achieve.

He is the epitome of Bradley Brave.

- He was always focused, he was always going forward.

One of his crew members in the MOL program always said that he walked slow, but he never looked back.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music) - This is a program that, over the course of the school year, builds a solar powered electric car.

- Students build a car that runs literally just off of sunshine.

The races we participate in, all the energy the car uses comes from the sun.

- In the summer, we race it against a bunch of other colleges that have also created these solar cars and see who wins.

(chuckles) - This year, we're going to Bowling Green, Kentucky.

There's a track by the Corvette Museum.

It's about three and a half mile long road track, and you just do laps on that for eight hours a day for three days in a row.

And the team that gets the most laps at the end of the third day wins.

So it's a very long endurance event.

- And then every other year, there's a second race that takes place, a road race that goes cross country, where your solar car is driving, like, on actual roads with actual cars, and it's whoever finishes the race, because a lot of cars do, like, break down so severely that, like, sometimes they can't finish it.

This past summer, we had a road race, and it was from Nashville all the way to Wyoming.

So, quite the trek.

(laughs) - There's no air conditioning or anything like that in the car, so it gets roughly 20 degrees hotter than outside in the car.

But it's a lot of fun.

I've never driven anything that drives anything like driving a solar car.

They're incredibly light.

They drive the same speed as a regular vehicle, so it's kind of, it's a weird feeling to come from a regular sized car to go down to something really small and really light.

- It's a high tech vehicle, it's made out of carbon fiber, high tech aluminum, it's covered with solar cells, and it's all built by the students.

- When I'm able to, like, create something, build something tangible, and then have it push our team across the country, is just incredible and super rewarding.

- We make our solar cars by designing them kind of very basically in CAD software, and then we'll do tests on the aerodynamics of them.

We're gonna try and make our cars more aerodynamic than the last every time.

And then we'll move into where we make our patterns and our molds for the actual body.

- And you kind of build the body out of, like, carbon fiber, epoxy, foam, and then kind of build it up from there.

We do the top and the bottom separately, and then when it comes time to actually drive it, you kind of lift the top on.

- And then hopefully we put about 1,000 miles on the car before we go to the track race so that we know we've got all of our problems ironed out, and we know how the car is going to perform.

- Anybody can join.

I got involved when I was a freshman.

You also don't have to be any particular major.

We have all kinds of majors.

- We are one of the very few teams that don't have an engineering department.

We will start having one next year.

That's the first year of ISUs.

But I think that a lot of the backgrounds that everybody comes from makes it a lot easier for our team to innovate on our ideas, because we're not all coming from the same background or the same knowledge of everything.

I mean, we've got people from wildly different education tracks, and they're all coming in here, bringing their knowledge to us.

- I'm a physics major.

We have, like, a game design major, engineering, technology.

It is very interdisciplinary.

We welcome everybody.

- It's from any department.

We've had, you know, music, chemistry majors, technology department, physics.

There's no restriction at all.

- When we're going out there, especially at the track race, we actually ended up beating Michigan and Stanford and U of I. U of I was the most rewarding.

(laughs) It's kind of a David versus Goliath kind of feeling.

- The track race, we beat five teams from the big 10, MIT, Stanford, CalSol, quite a few other, you know, really big name schools.

The vast majority of 'em have engineering departments.

We're only one of two or three teams that do not.

- It's a pretty feel good moment when you kind of notice how well how our team stacks up versus against some of these larger teams.

It's a very fun atmosphere.

We have a lot of good times.

- It's an amazing experience.

These kids, they build a car from scratch by themselves and then race it across the country.

You're not gonna get experiences like this.

It's really unique.

It's a tremendous amount of work, but, you know, I think it's something they really feel like they've got a sense of accomplishment.

So it's just a really positive experience.

And usually, once they go to one race, they're just totally hooked.

- It is something that's really unique, kind of niche in a way, but it's really cool.

Like, you're getting a lot of experience that you can then go on and apply, like, later in your career.

And also, like, if you like building things, wanna meet some cool people, like, hey, (laughs) it's a great place.

- I would say that this is the kind of thing that you will look back on for the rest of your life as one of the most fun things you've ever done in your life, one of the most rewarding experiences, and something, you will very fondly remember solar car, despite all of the long nights and despite a lot of the hard work that you have to do, and the missing out on a lot of certain things, 'cause you're spending time in the shop, building the car.

It's very easily my favorite part of my college experience.

(gentle music) - So NASA holds a competition every year, and the idea is that they want to invite universities and different institutions, and they want them to compete in making a robotic system.

And the idea is that this rover or robotic system can go to the moon and accomplish a task.

For instance, in our case, was digging the lunar soil, transporting it to a different location, dumping it.

An idea is that you will build a berm.

We competed for the first time last year, where we had our senior students that did this as part of a capstone project.

The idea is, again, to be as creative as possible and accomplish this task as best as you can.

- I heard about this, I think, from Dr. Lou.

He recommended it to me as a project, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I joined.

I started on this project last semester, and I've been working on it up until now.

My focus right now is to be working on the seals to make sure none of the lunar soil simulant gets in any of the bearings or in the motors or anything like that.

It's gonna be kind of tough because the simulant is very fine, and it's also really hard, so if it gets any of the motors, it'll break 'em.

I think last year, that was a bit of an issue, with the motors breaking down partway through the competition, but hopefully I'll have that fixed.

And I click on that one.

- One of the major constraints here is energy usage.

You're on a moon.

You don't have a lot of energy.

You can't just plug into a socket.

So, you have to work under very optimized energy conditions.

So you can't use a lot of battery power to run your rover.

Another major issue is communications.

How do you control the rover?

So, it's a very multidisciplinary approach that is required to solve these problems.

- So, first semester, I did a lot of the mechanical and mechanical design work in general, so that's with making CAD models, doing a lot of brainstorming.

Where now this semester, I've did a little swap, and I'm now doing the communications and programming side.

During the competition, we need to wirelessly communicate to the rover.

So, I'm in charge of setting up all of the, like, little individual computers that will control the systems, and then getting the main overarching one that controls all those little ones to successfully connect over Wi-Fi to a router that we're controlling with a laptop.

- These larger scale projects are very much dependent on collaboration, not just between the faculty, but between technical staff within the university.

So, downstairs, we have very advanced machines, which actually allow you to make very complicated parts, and then bring them up here and assemble them.

And we have a team of staff that have been very helpful for us.

And the students actually are able to use the facilities downstairs.

For example, you may need a part for the robot that you can't just order from somewhere.

You designed it, you thought about this part, but it's just not off the shelf available part.

So you basically say, "Well, I'm going to manufacture it here in Bradley."

So we go downstairs.

We have got very advanced machines that allow us to do that.

- In the past with the Lunabotics team, we've created some plates that they've needed, so they can affix those to the robot as they need to.

The great thing about this building as a whole is it's the Business & Engineering Convergence Center, so we really like to focus on convergence here.

That's what really makes it fun for me working with the Lunabotics group, because traditionally, I'm more manufacturing or mechanical, those types of things, whereas a lot of the Lunabotics has a lot more knowledge from electrical engineering type of components.

So for them to be able to come down and utilize this space in this building is an amazing thing to converge together to do all those.

- So, my role within the Lunabotics team this year is I am the mechanical team lead, so I'm responsible for producing all the parts in the CAD drawing.

So, while the rest of my team is working on developing the electrical system and the power system and the software of it, I'm working alongside them and creating the physical robot in which they are going to integrate their electronics into.

We have to have the ability to create the infrastructure for it and the framing, and this is the space that we will be able to use to create those parts.

Once I get done creating the part in a two dimensional drawing, I'll come down here and I'll see the shop director, and he will assist me in creating the part.

And at the end of that, I will be able to take that part, polish it, and do any post-processing to it.

And then from there, we can take it up to the lab and actually put it into the rover.

- One aspect of a project like this is the students get to be exposed in real life environment.

It's a lot of stress, but when it's time to actually go to the competition, it's euphoria.

It's a mix of apprehension, that your robot will just sink in the sand or not start, and then at the same time, it's excitement that, "Well, we have to accomplish something great, we wanna see it work."

So it's a very rewarding experience.

- [Narrator] Thank you for joining us on this journey.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to explore even more local content.

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We can't wait to see you next time on "You Gotta See This!"

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