Upon landing back on Earth with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the oldest person ever to fly to space declared “I want to go again — fast”.
Sixty years after acing astronaut tests, but being barred from flying because she was a woman, 82-year-old Wally Funk fulfilled a life-long dream today aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get up there,” an elated Funk said after the mission.
“I’ve done a lot of astronaut training throughout the world … and I could always beat the guys on what they were doing because I was always stronger and I’ve always done everything on my own.”
Jeff Bezos said Funk “was never nervous” on the 10-minute flight that took off in remote West Texas.
“She was wondering what was taking so long,” his brother Mark Bezos added.
Funk flew to space with the Bezos brothers and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen from the Netherlands.
The mission comes just over one week after Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson also rocketed into space.
Funk was the youngest of the “Mercury 13” group — 13 American women who were trained as astronauts in the early 1960s. They never made it to space despite going through the same tests as male astronauts.
At the time, NASA’s astronauts were all male military test pilots.
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