Wally Funk died Thursday.
She was 87.
If you didn’t know her story, you missed one of the grittier chapters in the history of flight. Funk didn’t just get a ticket to space. She earned it, over and over again, while everyone else told her she couldn’t. Or didn’t care if she did.
Born in Texas in 1959? No. 1939.
By the time she was 20 she was already a professional aviator. A teenager? Flying. It wasn’t a hobby. It was a lifestyle choice she refused to unmake.
The Girl Who Was Stronger Than The Guys
In 1961 the aerospace world was a boys’ club. Literally.
NASA had all men. So a doctor named William Lovelace decided to test some women anyway. He called them “Mercury 13.”
They took the same tests. Physical. Mental. Grueling.
Wally Funk was the youngest of the bunch at 21.
“I could always beat the guys,” she said.
And she did.
Remember that sensory deprivation tank test? The one meant to break your mind by taking away all sensation? Famous NASA astronaut John Glenn lasted three hours. That’s respectable.
Wally Funk lasted ten hours and thirty-five minutes.
She stayed in longer than him. Longer than anyone.
But government bureaucracy moves slow. The tests proved nothing mattered more than who signed the checks. Women were kept out of NASA’s astronaut program until 1978. The Mercury 13 flew home.
Not Wally. She was the only one of those thirteen women who would ever actually leave the atmosphere.
Married to Airplanes
Funk didn’t have time to pout.
She became the first female civilian flight instructor on a U.S. military base first. Then the NTSB’s first female air safety investigator. She raced airplanes. She ran aviation schools.
She famously said she was married to airplanes.
She never married a man.
She applied to NASA in the late 70s. When the door finally cracked open for women.
Denied.
She applied again.
Denied.
Third time?
No luck.
So she watched from the ground. In 1995 she sat there with the other old Mercury 13 women watching Eileen Collins launch the space shuttle. The first woman pilot. It should have been Wally.
Was it?
No. It wasn’t. But Wally kept flying. She kept training kids. She kept believing.
60 Years Late. Perfect.
Blue Origin finally built something small enough for civilians. New Shepard.
Wally wasn’t going to wait for a retirement invite.
On July 20, Jeff Bezos put together a crew. Him. His brother. A kid from the Netherlands named Oliver. And Wally.
82 years old.
She launched on NS-16.
For 109 seconds she was an astronaut. The oldest person to go to space. The oldest woman ever to leave Earth.
Afterwards, shaking a bit but beaming, she told everyone: “I’ve been waiting a long to finally get up there.”
She wasn’t rich like Bezos. She wasn’t young like the student.
She was Wally Funk.
Blue Origin released a statement. Called her a pioneer. Said her story will inspire generations.
Probably true.
But looking back at her timeline… she didn’t need their words. She had the altitude. She had the record. And she had spent decades proving that talent doesn’t expire because of your birthday or your gender.
She beat John Glenn in a tank. She flew into suborbital space while men half her age were still doing paperwork.
The sky isn’t the limit anymore. It’s just the lobby.
