Wally Funk, who lives close to Dallas, was the primary female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the primary female air security investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board
Sixty years after acing astronaut assessments however barred as a result of she was a lady, Wally Funk will rocket into area alongside Jeff Bezos in simply three weeks.
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Bezos’ firm Blue Origin introduced Thursday that the pioneering pilot might be aboard the July 20 launch from West Texas, flying within the capsule as an “honored guest.” She’ll be a part of Bezos, his brother and the winner of a $28 million charity public sale, as the primary folks to trip a New Shepard rocket.
At 82, she’ll be the oldest particular person to launch into area.
Funk was the youngest of the so-called Mercury 13 ladies who went by astronaut testing within the early Nineteen Sixties, however by no means made it to area — and even NASA’s astronaut corps — as a result of they had been female. Back then, all of NASA’s astronauts had been male navy take a look at pilots.
Funk stated she feels “fabulous” about lastly getting the prospect to go to area.
“I’ll love every second of it. Whoooo! Ha-ha. I can hardly wait,” Funk stated in an Instagram video posted by Bezos.
“Nothing has ever gotten in my way,” she added. “They said, ‘Well, you’re a girl, you can’t do that.’ I said, ’Guess what, doesn’t matter what you are. You can still do it if you want to do it and I like to do things that nobody has ever done.”
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In a cosmic twist, she’ll beat the late John Glenn, who set a report at age 77 when flying aboard area shuttle Discovery in 1998. Glenn pooh-poohed the concept of girls flying in area, shortly after he grew to become the primary American to orbit the world in 1962.
“No one has waited longer,” Bezos stated through Instagram. “It’s time. Welcome to the crew, Wally.”
The Amazon founder is stepping down as the company’s CEO on Monday.
The upcoming launch — which follows 15 successful test flights — will open the door to paying customers. Blue Origin has yet to announce ticket prices or when the public might strap into the spacious six-seat capsule, which reaches an altitude of about 65 miles, just beyond the edge of space. The up-and-down flights last 10 minutes.
The reusable rocket is named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and July 20 is the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Funk, who lives near Dallas, was the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. In the posted video, she said she has 19,600 flying hours and has taught more than 3,000 people to fly.
She was among two dozen female pilots who underwent six days of rigorous physical tests — the same ones administered to the Mercury astronaut candidates — in 1960 and 1961. The doctor who had tested the Mercury 7 men had heard the Soviets planned to send a woman to space and he wanted to see if women could endure the effects of weightlessness.
The candidates had to spend hours in an isolation water tank, swallow rubber hose, and get needles stuck in their heads, among other things.
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Thirteen of the women — including Funk — passed. But the program was abruptly canceled, and the Soviets went on to launch the first woman into space — Valentina Tereshkova — in 1963.
“They told me that I had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys,” Funk recalled. “So I bought maintain of NASA 4 occasions. I stated I would like to grow to be an astronaut, however no person would take me. I didn’t assume that I’d ever get to go up.”
It wasn’t till 1983 that the primary American girl soared into area — Sally Ride, who died in 2012. And it wasn’t till 1995 that an American girl piloted a spaceship — Eileen Collins aboard shuttle Discovery. Many of the Mercury 13 ladies gathered at Cape Canaveral for that launch.
Keen to get to area, Funk reserved a seat years in the past on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket ship. She stays on the passenger record; the corporate plans three extra take a look at flights from New Mexico, one among them with Branson on board, earlier than launching prospects.
In the video, Bezos describes to Funk how the 4 Blue Origin passengers will expertise zero gravity for a couple of minutes, then land gently on the desert floor and open the hatch.
“You step outside. What’s the first thing you say?” he requested her.
“I will say, ‘Honey, that was the best thing that ever happened to me!” Funk replied, embracing Bezos in an enormous bear hug.
