Wally Funk, the 82-year-old pilot who will go to space with Bezos

the pilot Wally FunkShe is one of 13 women who passed NASA’s astronaut training exams in the 1960s and will travel into space with billionaire Jeff Bezos on the company’s independent sightseeing trip. blue origin.

This six-person flight has four seats already occupied, that of the Amazon CEO, that of his brother Mark, the guy who won the auction, who paid for his seat at $28 million and now Wally Funk.

Blue Origin reports that the online auction for New Shepard’s first seat concluded with Win a $28 million bid مليون.

Nearly 7,600 people signed up for bids from 159 countries.

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Who is Wali Funk?

Latest news from blue origin On the crew that will fly into space on the first human flight of the New Shepard on July 20, it is revealed that this flight will be Wally Funk as its guest star, Youngest graduate of Women in Space, a privately funded project that tested female pilots’ ability to become astronauts.

Later known as “Mercury 13,” the program was named after thirteen American women who had successfully undergone physiological and psychological screening tests as the NASA astronauts selected for Project Mercury. But they have never flown into space.

Wally, the first FAA inspector and first flight safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), now He became the first person to fly into space.

Jeff Bezos asked Wally Funk to join this first flight and the video was posted to the billionaire’s Instagram account with a message that read:

In 1961, Wally Funk was at the helm of his class as part of Mercury 13. woman in space. And despite completing their training, the program was canceled and none of them traveled.”

“It’s time. Welcome to the crew, Wally. We’re excited that you’ll be traveling with us on July 20 as our guest of honor,” the message continues.

Wally on Mercury 13

In 1961, after a series of rigorous tests, a select group of pilots were disqualified from the space race, as it was a place reserved for men.

The story of these women was documented in the 2018 Netflix documentary Mercury 13.

In this documentary, Wally tells Funk that she was a curious girl, had her first plane ride at the age of nine, and there she felt free and discovered that flying was what she wanted most.

The first woman recruited to take tests and exams to be an astronaut was Jerry Cobb, who said in an interview that one of the exams consisted of passing a sensory deprivation room.

The women recruited into Mercury 13 underwent this psychological test, which consisted of immersing themselves in a warm water tank that was in a large room, putting earplugs and foam around the waist to float.

The test made them lose sensory ability. Men who passed this test could not survive long, but women showed greater ability in this test. Funk set the record for ten hours and thirty-five minutes.

“They did this test for us because they thought space travel would be like this, so I lay there… and I thought it would be cool to go into space and feel light… My goal was to float among the stars,” Funk recounts in the documentary.

In a life history interview that NASA I made a funk you can read “Failure is not part of who I am. I do my best and kick in every possible door, no matter where I go.”

Thirteen

The Women in Space Program It was a short-lived, privately funded project testing female pilots for astronaut skills in the early 1960s.

The women participating were recognized as pioneers, and their ambition to pilot the latest and fastest aircraft made them among the first American women to receive advanced flight medical tests:

Jerry Cobb

Wally Funk

Erin Leverton

Myrtle “K” Cagle

Jane B Hart

Jane Nora Stombo

Jerry Sloan

Rhea Hurl

Sarah Gorelik

Bernice “B” Trimble Steadman

Jean Dietrich

Marion Dietrich

Jane Hickson

Bezos trip

The flight will take place on July 20 to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the 1969 Apollo moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

This will be done on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. After takeoff, the rocket will separate and the capsule, to which the passengers go, will reach an altitude of more than 100 km for four minutes.

The total flight time is 11 minutes, but the tour crew will be four minutes away on the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, where they will be able to experience the lack of gravity and see the Earth’s curvature from space.

This first independent tourist flight from Blue Origin, which still holds two more seats, is part of the private space exploration race, space tourism, with large companies such as SpaceX, Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. (with information from agencies)