Wally devoured the profile and knew she had to join the lady astronaut trainees. [9], At 20 years old, Funk became a professional aviator. Wally Funk, 82, joins Bezos space flight Blue Origin From left: Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos, Oliver Daemen, Wally Funk On this flight was the oldest person who has been to space - Ms Funk -. Today, Funk will have a lifelong dream fulfilled as a member of the Blue Origin flight crew. Space is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Her parents owned a variety store. At the launch, an emotional Wally cried out. In 1961, pilot Wally Funk donned a one-piece bathing suit and entered a pitch black isolation tank. In 1964, she became the youngest woman in the history of Stephens College to receive the Alumna Achievement Award. But NASA refused to allow women into the space program. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! By contrast, when the astronaut John Glenn was selected for the Mercury program, he also did not have an engineering degree. Wally Funk was chosen by. On the one hand, I am thrilled for her that she is getting to live this dream she has held for so long, said Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The Mercury 13 were skilled pilots who trained to be a part of NASAs spaceflight program before women were allowed to participate. Wally Funk was a member of the Flying Susies at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she was the last one to receive her pilots license. There was nothing I couldnt do., Wally Funk waving in front of an aircraft while riding a bicycle, I was not an A student. Earlier forms of this gatekeeping prevented so many women from accomplished careers in spaceflight and space science. To register herself for these tests, she wrote letters to Cobb and Dr. William Randolph Lovelace, the man who devised the trials. At Stephens College, she was required to fly 100 miles as part of her flying training. When she started flying at 16, she knew it would be a lifelong passion. After passing these tests, 22-year-old Wally Funk joined Cobb and 11 other successful participants in the Mercury 13 program, a privately funded program that aimed to train women astronauts and send them into space. Have a great ride, Wally Funk! She said. On Tuesday, Wally Funk (second from right) stood with other crew members in front of the Blue Origin rocket after their launch from the spaceport near Van Horn, Texas. During a media interaction, Wally reacted to Jeff Bezos invitation. Then, in July 2021, Jeff Bezos invited 82-year-old Wally Funk to join him on a Blue Origin launch. She climbed into the cockpit for her first flying lesson at nine. On December 9, 1974, she joined the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, D.C. as Air Safety Investigator; Wally Funk was their first female Investigator. Wally Funk first time experienced airplanes at the age of just one when she was taken to an airport near their residence in New Mexico by her parents, where she closely watched a Douglas DC-3, an early airliner. When Blue Origins New Shepard rocket launched from remote West Texas on July 20, 2021, 82-year-old Wally Funk became the oldest passenger to travel into space. In 1975, Wally Funk was named Honorary Colonel by the Governor of Louisiana. Funk will be fulfilling a lifelong dream today by joining the Blue Origin flight crew. Awards and honors Future space tourists led by Wally Funk (R), who have paid their deposits on the $200,000.00 fare, celebrate before the Virgin Galactic VSS Enterprise spacecraft makes it's first public landing during the Spaceport America runway dedication ceremony near Las Cruces, New Mexico on October 22, 2010. She was the keynote speaker for the United States at the World Aviation Education and Safety Congress in 1986. ', I cant tell people that are watching how fabulous I feel to have been picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip, Funk said in an announcement video. Wally also continued to work as a flight instructor, training hundreds of people to operate planes. Wally Funk has really never given up on her dream of spaceflight, Margaret Weitekamp, curator of the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museums space history department, told Space.com. Wally Funk Is Defying Gravity and 60 Years of Exclusion From Space, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/science/wally-funk-jeff-bezos.html. In an interview, she talked about her mother who also desired to fly as a young girl, and how her maternal grandfather doubted her mothers dreams. In June 2010, she was inducted into the Oklahoma State Universitys Aviation Hall of Fame. Aviator Wally Funk in a video released to announce her participation in Blue Origin's first crewed flight on July 20, 2021. Funk and Bezos will make up half the crew of the first crewed flight of Blue Origin's reusable suborbital space tourism vehicle, dubbed New Shepard, when it launches from the west Texas desert on Tuesday morning (July 20). Denied 60 years ago, Wally Funk is finally going to space Jeff Bezos selected her to take part in first New Shepard crewed flight In this 2019 photo made available by NASA, Mercury 13 astronaut. When the New Shepard reaches an altitude of 100 kilometers, it is the first of its kind. At the age of 14, President Dwight Eisenhower sent her a letter of appreciation, after the National Rifle Association praised about her shooting results. You get her out there and start her flying.. Wally was present at the launch of Eileen Collins first Space Shuttle as a pilot and commander in 1995. Finally, the researchers pulled Wally from the tank as the pilot promised she could go longer. By the age of 21, Wally Funk had become a professional aviator and started working as a Civilian Flight Instructor of noncommissioned and commissioned officers of the United States Army after she joined Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1960. She said, I cant tell people that are watching how fabulous I feel to be picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip.. The space flight took place on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. Wally was the first female flight instructor at a military base in the United States. Talking about this, Funk says. ", Related:Meet the crew launching on Blue Origin's 1st astronaut flight on July 20. Related: As space billionaires take flight, 'the right stuff' for space travel enters a new era. But when she applied to become a commercial pilot at both TWA and Continental, she told The Guardian she was rejected, saying they couldnt hire her because they didnt have a ladies bathroom at the training facility.. Together with Gene Nora Jessen, Funk is one of the last two surviving members of the Mercury 13 group. But, flying was my thing. I was given the gift of great confidence and born with the ability to fly., I go right to the wheel and I try to turn the nut, and mother said: Shes going to fly., The air and how pretty it was, and how the ground looked. . Lovelace had designed NASAs astronaut tests and decided, on his own, to see whether women might make better astronauts than men. At the age of 82, Funk, who has spent six decades trying to reach space, will soon join Amazon founder Jeff Bezos onboard the Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, in the world's first unpiloted civilian space flight. At Oklahoma State University (OSU), Wally Funk became an officer of the famous Flying Aggies, and she also flew for them in the International Collegiate Air Meets. She said. None of those women have gone into space. It peaked at number 34 on the ARIA charts. Ms. Funk has spent the past 60 years trying to find another way into space. [4] At age 14, she became an expert marksman, receiving the Distinguished Rifleman's Award. While Wally Funk was undergoing her flying training at Oklahoma State University (OSU), she received the Outstanding Female Pilot trophy, the Flying Aggie Top Pilot and the Alfred Alder Memorial Trophy two years in succession. Picture Courtesy of Tech. Wally Funk is a prolific aviator who has displayed various aerobatic maneuvers in several womens air races including Powder Puff Derbys 25th Annual Race, Pacific Air Race, Palms to Pines Air Race in which she stood 8th, 6th, and 8th respectively. By NASA/Joel Kowsky. Funk told CNN after returning to Earth, I loved every minute of it. In 1961, Wally Funk became the youngest member of the Mercury 13 program, a privately funded project meant to see how women held up to the pressures of spaceflight, and a program that never saw the light of day. Wally you matter. Jeff Bezos and pioneering female aviator Wally Funk emerge from their capsule after their flight aboard Blue Origins New Shepard rocket near Van Horn, Texas, U.S., July 20, 2021, I go right to the wheel and I try to turn the nut, and mother said: Shes going to fly., I was not an A student. On October 4, 1975, Wally Funk emerged as the winner of the Pacific Air Race from San Diego, California to Santa Rosa, California; she won the race against 80 participating competitors while flying her red and white Citabria. Report a problem? While growing up in Taos, New Mexico, where her parents ran a chain of shops, her mother noticed that she was not like a typical American girl, rather she was a tomboy who would ride horses and compete in marksmanship contests. Wally Funk is the title of the 11th track on Pleasure Seekers, the 2022 album by The Electric Swing Circus. The Real Wally Funk. Wally FunkWally Funk next to a glide plane, c. 1960. Wally Funk didnt wait for an invitation from the female astronaut trainees program. At 18-years-old and 82-years-young, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk represent the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space.. In an interview, Wally talked about this. Nelson recalled the conversation when she called to congratulate her friend in an interview with Space.com. [9] In 1986, she was the key speaker for the US at The World Aviation Education and Safety Congress. "Her aim was to not only to just do it to the best of her ability, every test, but to try to do better than whoever had gone before her," Sue Nelson, a science journalist who later traveled with Funk to research her book, "Wally Funks Race for Space" (Chicago Review Press, 2019), told Space.com. In 1983, Wally watched as Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. The young Funk was only a year old when she got her first glimpse of an airplane; her parents had taken her to an airport near their home in New Mexico, where she saw a Douglas DC-3, an early airliner. In February 1995, Wally Funk was featured as ten of the original thirteen female astronaut candidates on NBCs Dateline., Several magazines and tabloids including Life, Town and Country, and Ms Magazine have featured Wally Funk. Including her on this flight is a nice bit of poetic justice.. Funk once stated that she has never married and is married to airplanes. She stated in the interview that she had no resentment about being barred from spaceflight. Collins invited seven of the Mercury 13 women to the launch. ), "Like so many things that we see in women's history, the advancement happens in fits and starts," Weitekamp said. In the 1960s, Wally Funk was alsolisted in Whos Who in Young Women in America and Whos Who in Aviation.. [9] In 1987, Funk was appointed Chief Pilot at Emery Aviation College, Greeley, Colorado, overseeing the entire flight programs for 100 students from Private to Multi-engine flight Instructor and Helicopter ratings. Katie Mack, an astrophysicist and assistant professor of astronomy at North Carolina State University, also spoke to the thrill of Ms. Funk going to space but also about who gets to make the decisions. And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com. ", Related: From Yuri Gagarin's launch to today, human spaceflight has always been political, Blue Origin has long showed an interest in nodding to spaceflight's history, so it's not a coincidence that Funk will step inside the New Shepard capsule on its first crewed flight. When NASA finally began accepting women in the late 1970s, Funk applied three times. The six-hour mark passed and Wally continued to float peacefully. When Wally is not flying an aircraft, she gets herself involved in other aspects of flying like ballooning, parachute jumping, and hang-gliding. Wally Funk Is Defying Gravity and 60 Years of Exclusion From Space. Visit Ninety-Nines.org for a timeline of Wally's accomplishments. Funk was named Chief Pilot at Emery Aviation College in Greeley, Colorado, in 1987, where she oversaw the entire flight program for 100 students ranging from Private to Multi-engine Flight Instructor and Helicopter ratings. Wally Funk has spent her life in pursuit of a dream. When Wally turned nine, she had her first flying lesson, when a pilot helped her steer a plane, and while praising Wallys skills, he told her parents that shed done a great job. She said. NASA used the tests to evaluate the military test pilots it had recruited for the young human spaceflight program. She will join the youngest person in space, Oliver Daemon, 18. Her mother declared, Shes going to fly.. The tests had been designed by Dr. Lovelace for the Mercury astronauts. The money for the flight came from Funk's own book and film royalties and family money. Funk retired from her post as an Air Safety Investigator in 1985 after serving for 11 years. After graduating from Stephens College, Wally Funk went to Oklahoma State University, where she pursued a Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education and earned her Commercial, Single-engine Land, Multi-engine Land, Single-engine Sea, Instrument, and Flight lnstructors and all Ground Instructors ratings. In one test, volunteers were placed in sensory deprivation tanks. "It was a very short part of their lives," Nelson said. Jeremy Hansen: Artemis 2 Canadian astronaut will fly around the moon, Underwater spacewalks recreate the 'moon' in a giant NASA pool (photos). In 1964, Funk became the youngest woman in the history of Stephens College to receive the Alumna Achievement Award, honored in recognition for her work in aviation. Wally Funk was a member of the Mercury 13, a group of skilled female pilots who were excluded from NASAs first missions to space. In 1961, three years before Jeff Bezos was born, Ms. Funk and 12 other women went through testing as part of the Woman in Space Program. Thats where she entered the isolation tank. Wallys parents had brought their one-year-old to an airport in New Mexico. As she was recovering, a guidance counselor suggested that she take aviation classes to distract her. In an interview with Space.com, Nelson recalled the conversation when she called to congratulate her friend. These individual stories and victories are important, but they are not justice, Dr. Walkowicz added. Her aim was to not only to just do it to the best of her ability, every test, but to try to do better than whoever had gone before her, said Nelson, who traveled with Funk to research her book, Wally Funks Race for Space. She just is immensely driven and competitive, which is a sort of the typical early astronaut, test pilot type really she fits the mold of those early astronauts.. Funk received her Airline Transport Rating in 1968, making her the 58th woman in the United States to do so. But they were never included in NASA's vision for spaceflight and never became astronauts until now. I first flew in a plane at eight, and by the age of 10 I had mother drive me out to an airstrip to study the planes parked there, Funk told The Guardian. Discover Walks contributors speak from all corners of the world - from Prague to Bangkok, Barcelona to Nairobi. She joined Space.com in July 2018, with previous writing published in outlets including Newsweek and Audubon. Funk, who had already made history as the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector, joined . [3]Huck Magazine jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_5273_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_5273_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Wally talked about this in an interview. Funk became the oldest person to go to space on July 20, 2021, at age 82, flying on Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft during its suborbital flight, breaking a record held by John Glenn for 23 years. NASA required astronauts to hold an engineering degree. According to Mr. Bezos, he chose the date to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Wally Funk, 82, who was once barred from an astronaut career because she's a woman, became the oldest person ever to travel to space on Tuesday. When she was one year old, her parents took her to an airport near where they lived in New Mexico and she got up close to a Douglas DC-3, an early airliner. But among women and nonbinary people working in the study of space, the account of Ms. Funk and her cohort struggling to become astronauts and being blocked because of their gender has resonated. It was probably all of 15 minutes., I did everything that people didnt expect a girl to do. Rare red asteroids around Neptune could reveal the secrets of the early solar system, Your monthly guide to stargazing & space science, Subscribe for just 1 per issue with our Spring Savings, Issues delivered straight to your door or device. In. According to Space.com, the women were named after Mercury 7, a group of seven male astronauts chosen by NASA for the Mercury program. [4], Funk was also an accomplished outdoorswoman, spending time riding her bike or her horse, skiing, hunting, and fishing. That she was ultimately excluded from the first phase because she is a woman, and will now be included in the next one, also highlights difficult questions of whom space is for. This page was last edited on 5 April 2023, at 03:27. Seven of the pioneering Mercury 13, including Wally Funk (second left). Wally Funk is a pioneer American aviator who, at the age of 21, was the youngest member of the Mercury 13 program, a privately funded project in the 1960s that meant to see how women held up to the pressures of spaceflight. All of these women were pilots who had logged hundreds or thousands of flight hours in some cases more than the men who were selected for the astronaut program. Numerous books and movies have acknowledged Wally Funks role in the history of the space program like Martha Ackmanns 2003 history The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight and the Netflix documentary Mercury 13. Follow her on Twitter at @meghanbartels. In 2017, her name was inscribed on the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museums Wall of Honor in recognition of your contribution to our aviation and exploration heritage.. . When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered her a seat on the first crewed flight of his space tourism enterprise Blue Origin, it was an invitation aviator Wally Funk had waited six decades to receive. And then she said, Im going up for all of us. Ms. Funk was in the tank for over 10 hours when the researchers finally brought her out because they wanted to go home. Wally Funk took her first flying lesson at age nine. From left, seven of the FLATs in 1995: Gene Nora Jessen, Ms. Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Rutley, Myrtle Cagle and Bernice Steadman. I can go out there and do anything.. In 1970, Wally received the Commercial Glider Rating, she taught five Aeronautical Science classes at Redondo High School in California. Wally Funk never married in her life. It was 1961, and at the age of 22, Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk was the youngest of a group of 13 elite women pilots selected to undergo the same series of medical and psychological tests given to. Surviving members of the group of women informally dubbed the Mercury 13 attended the 1995 shuttle launch of Eileen Collins as she became the first female shuttle pilot. Wally Funk, who was five at the time, jumped from her fathers barn in Taos, New Mexico, while wearing a Superman cape. Wally Funk, one of the First Lady Astronauts, in the cockpit of an AT-6 training plane in 1961.CreditDon Cravens/Getty Images. Wally Funk is one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who trained to be astronauts in the early 1960s. Ms. Jessen had to stop flying in 2017 because of macular degeneration, and Ms. Funk fought for 60 years to finally get her trip to space. According to Wally, her fascination for flying was so intense that she compromised with her formal studies and was never excellent at studies. she has addressed over 50 professional organizations. She was joined in space by the 18-year-old Oliver Daemon. Higher, faster, longer that is my motto, said Wally. Do you have an airport? 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