Part 37
What do you think that the small towns of Welkom and Lydenburg, as well as the city of Pretoria in South Africa, have to do with space travel?
I’d be surprised if you get the connection. Some of you may know that Elon Musk, the Founder of SpaceX, was born in Pretoria, South Africa’s joint capital city with Cape Town. A few of you may have heard of Mark Shuttleworth, who was the second self-funded space tourist and first South African in space, who was born in the gold-mining town of Welkom in the Orange Free State.
I’d be amazed if any of you have heard of the third member of this spaced-out trio! Johann Schutte was the first and only South African to travel to the NASA astronaut program only to be disappointed when the US Administration decreed that only US-born citizens could qualify as an astronaut. Johann, who was born in the small, remote town of Lydenburg in the highlands of Mpumalanga Province, returned to South Africa to take up his second passion in life after space, that of cinematography and moviemaking. Because of this, Johann and I eventually met, became good friends and then partners in a movie company, KDS Productions.
These three remarkable men who grew up in environments that hardly indicated in any way an interest or vision of involvement in space travel, nevertheless all looked up into the star-filled skies of the Southern Hemisphere and dreamed of one day reaching for the stars – or the moon, at least!
Rather than squeezing their stories into a single blog, I propose to devote a blog to each of them. ExoBrain may not, at this stage, be exploring outer space, but Peter Warren has rather devoted his time to inner space, which provides an infinity of possibilities. ExoTech, as it develops, will also no doubt expand its extraordinary capabilities into the field of inter-space communication, creating a synergy with future spacemen and spacewomen.
Let’s start with Johann. His father owned a chrome mine near Lydenburg but he and his family lived in the town. The town’s main claim to fame is its trout hatcheries. The clean mountain waters provide ideal conditions for these delicious fish, but Johann clearly had other fish to fry, as the saying goes. From the start of his schooling, he showed an exceptional talent for learning. The normal age for completing high school at the time was 17 or 18 but Johann wrote his final matriculation exams with distinctions at the tender age of 14.
In addition to his educational prowess, Johann had learned to fly a light plane. It was therefore natural that he would do his compulsory national military service in the Air Force. Although he was capable of flying the trainer jets at 15, he was not allowed to obtain his pilot’s license until 16, when he became the youngest fighter pilot in the South African Air Force.
The young airmen were encouraged to continue their academic studies and Johann obtained a BSc. degree in Mechanical Engineering. In the meantime, the space bug had bitten him, so he applied to NASA in the US to join the Space Program as an astronaut. He felt he had all the necessary qualifications, a pilot of jet fighter planes, physical fitness, exceptional eyesight and the Mechanical Engineering degree. However, they wrote back saying that he would also need a degree in advanced mathematics.
Eighteen months later, he obtained the additional degree and was allowed to enrol in the Space Program. He arrived in the US, and for the next few months he experienced the arduous regimen of training to become an astronaut. During this time, he met and spoke with a number of the legendary astronauts like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and others
Looking back on it, he was amazed that he was even accepted into the program in the first place. He was, after all, an Afrikaner whose nation had fought the British in the Anglo-Boer war around the turn of the twentieth century and then in 1948 had voted into power the infamous Nationalist Government, that coined the unfortunate word “Apartheid” which decreed that people of different races should develop separately. The word itself, pronounced “Apart hate,” ironically tarnished white South Africans for over fifty years with the stigma of racism. Tragically, although many whites, both Afrikaans and English-speaking were unhappy about the enforced separation of white and black, the rule by a minority of fanatical white supremacists created years of suppression that cleverly painted a picture of the “fair” division of the races whereby, in theory, the African people could live peacefully in their own regions or homelands.
This is not a story about the horrors of Apartheid but simply to show how Johann, who was not a political person, felt himself very lucky to have been accepted into the program. Sadly, this was short-lived as all foreign-born trainee astronauts were cut from the program. Johann was not singled out as such but had the misfortune to have been born outside of America.
Fortunately, he did have another passion – the movie business! Johann returned to South Africa and, starting as a cameraman, he eventually turned to producing and was responsible for a number of successful Afrikaans-language pictures that proved to be very popular in a country that did not have television until 1976. Johann then returned to the States, working in Hollywood for six years before being fortunate enough to attract the attention of Norman Katz, President of the Warner Brothers International Sales and Distribution Division.
He worked as Katz’s assistant for four years, finding finance for and producing a number of pictures made in Europe. After Katz retired from Warner’s, Johann travelled to England where he was able to raise finance for a number of pictures including Gold starring Roger Moore and Shout at the Devil starring Lee Marvin, both based on novels written by Wilbur Smith, as well Wild Geese II, with a number of major stars. Another picture that was struggling to top up its funding was rescued by Johann who put the balance of the budget in place within days. The name of that picture? Chariots of Fire.
Johann returned to South Africa when his father was ailing and took over his mining company for a few years. In the meantime, he met and married a South African girl with a Greek Cypriot father and Scottish mother. They have a son Byron who is currently completing his advanced IT studies in Prague, Czech Republic.
The mining company closed down, and Johann continued to combine his movie passion with his other skill, that of a commercial pilot and later became a television weatherman, in between doing his MBA and even obtaining a Doctorate. He and I, along with another partner, Hollywood veteran producer/director Eric Karson continue to seek funding for a number of movie projects for which I have written the screenplays and I will co-produce with Eric and Johann.
Ambitious and innovative minds such as Johann’s will not be stopped. Even as we all grow older, we remain as determined as ever to reach for the stars, even though they may not be the same one’s Johann originally sought to conquer!
Which is why I remain deeply committed to ExoBrain. Peter Warren is also reaching for his stars, which in his case come in a digital package!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.