'No one has waited longer': trailblazing female pilot Wally Funk will go to space with Bezos
Source: The Guardian
Wally Funk, a trailblazing female pilot denied the job of astronaut in the 1960s over her gender, will finally get the chance to fulfill her dreams of going into space.
Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Thursday on Instagram that Funk will be part of a four-person crew set to be launched into space by Blue Origin during a 10-minute flight on his rocket New Shepard later this month.
Funk, 82, will be the oldest person ever to travel into space, after the late John Glenn set the current record at age 77 while aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998. I didnt think Id ever get to go up, Funk said in a video interview posted on the companys website.
Funk was one of the Mercury 13 pilots who volunteered in 1961 to be part of a program to get women to qualify for Nasas astronaut program, independently led by William Randolph Lovelace, head of Nasas committee on life science.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/01/jeff-bezos-space-flight-pilot-wally-funk
Kid Berwyn
(14,651 posts)From Encyclopedia Astronautica:
Mercury 13 Astronaut Training Group selected. - . Nation: USA. Related Persons: Allison, Cagle, Myrtle, Cobb, Dietrich, Dietrich, Marion, Funk, Gorelick, Hart, Jane, Hixson, Leverton, Steadman, Stumough, Truhill.
Qualifications: Qualified jet pilot with minimum 1,500 flight-hours/10 years experience, bachelor's degree or equivalent, under 40 years old, under 180 cm height, excellent physical condition.. Randolph Lovelace was director of the clinic where the Mercury astronauts had undergone their physical examinations. He and Jacqueline Cochran, the first American woman to break the sound barrier, wanted to prove that women were equally qualified to be astronauts. In early 1961 they arranged for 20 highly qualified female pilots to take the same physical tests undergone by the Mercury astronauts. Thirteen passed the tests, but NASA maintained its position that astronauts had to be qualified test pilots (all of whom were white males). One of the thirteen was the wife of a US Senator, and some congressional hearings were arranged. Despite the publicity NASA was still unwilling to place them in the official NASA training program.
Oddly enough, the selection of these women may have resulted in the first woman going into space after all. In May 1962 a Soviet delegation, including cosmonaut Gherman Titov and cosmonaut commander Nikolai Kamanin, visited Washington. Kamanin had been pushing for the flight of a Soviet woman into space since October 1961, and five Soviet female cosmonauts had just reported for training a month earlier. However the flight of a woman in space had little support from Chief Designer Korolev or Kamanin's military commanders. On May 3 Kamanin and Titov were invited to a barbecue at the home of astronaut John Glenn. Glenn, already politically-connected, was an enthusiastic supporter of the 'Lovelace 13'. Kamanin understood from Glenn that the first American woman would make a three-orbit Mercury flight by the end of 1962. Armed with the threat that 'the Americans will beat us', Kamanin was able to obtain a decision to go ahead with the first flight of a Soviet woman within weeks of his return. The Russians were obsessed with being first in space -- and even though NASA's female cosmonauts never materialised, Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963.
http://www.astronautix.com/f/funk.html
Truly great news!
PSPS
(13,512 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,152 posts)by the other passenger.
https://earthsky.org/space/ticket-to-space-28-million-blue-origin-auction/
I would guess Ms. Funk has been having a medical before the announcement.
electric_blue68
(14,600 posts)A friend of mine in Texas in 6th grade ('64) said she wanted to be an astronaut.
"Girls can't be astronauts" was the reply.
🤬
question everything
(47,265 posts)electric_blue68
(14,600 posts)maybe some really rich liberal Dem will ask to accompany them on a short flight.
Warpy
(110,907 posts)about how hard it had been to find astronauts who would fit into the capsules. Shepard was 5'11" but he was extremely thin and I have no idea how they squeezed him into that thing, which I have seen.
I asked why they didn't use women. It was the first time I saw a whole room crash and have to reboot.
electric_blue68
(14,600 posts)🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Glad you asked the question. 👍
whistler162
(11,155 posts)[link:https://astronomy.com/news/2020/12/these-astronauts-had-the-right-stuff-but-never-made-it-to-space|
"American fighter ace and test pilot Chuck Yeager, who famously was the first person to break the sound barrier, was not even considered for astronaut candidacy, as he was not a college graduate. (Yeager, who epitomized what author Tom Wolfe called The Right Stuff, passed away this week at the age of 97.)" 12/20202 article