Wally Funk, Mercury 13 Pioneer Who Finally Reached Space at 82, Dies at 87
Featured image: Wally Funk in a blue flight suit at a Blue Origin press conference, July 2021. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk, the trailblazing aviator who was denied a NASA astronaut seat in the 1960s because she was a woman and finally flew to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard at age 82, died July 8 at her home in Grapevine, Texas. She was 87.
Funk was the last surviving member of the Mercury 13, a group of 13 women who underwent the same physical and psychological testing as NASA’s male Mercury astronauts in 1960-1961. She was the youngest of the group at 21 and the only one to pass every test. She also set a sensory deprivation tank record of 10 hours and 35 minutes, outperforming John Glenn.
The program was canceled without explanation. NASA would not accept women into the astronaut corps until 1978.
Funk spent the next six decades building a career in aviation, becoming the first female civilian flight instructor at a US military base, the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector, and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, where she investigated approximately 450 aircraft accidents including the catastrophic PSA Flight 182 crash in San Diego.
A lifetime of firsts
Born February 1, 1939, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Funk grew up in Taos and was drawn to flight from her first moments. At age 1, her parents took her to an airport and she made a beeline for the wheel of a Douglas DC-3. Her mother told a biographer: “She’s going to fly.” By 7 she was building balsa wood planes. She had her first flying lesson at 9.
She left high school at 16 to attend Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she joined the “Flying Susies” and earned her pilot’s license alongside an associate degree. At Oklahoma State University she became an officer in the “Flying Aggies,” winning the Outstanding Female Pilot trophy two years running.
After college, she became the only female flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, training Army helicopter pilots. She went on to log more than 19,600 flying hours and taught more than 3,000 people to fly, soloing over 700 of them.
Mercury 13: ‘Better and faster than the guys’
In 1961, Dr. William Lovelock and Dr. Randy Lovelace recruited women pilots for a private project testing whether women could meet astronaut standards. The program was never officially NASA’s, but the tests were identical to those used on the Mercury 7 men.
Funk was told she “had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys.” She spent 10 hours and 35 minutes in a sensory deprivation tank, beating John Glenn’s record. Yet when the program ended, the women were told that including women in spaceflight “may be undesirable,” as Glenn himself reportedly said.
Funk applied to NASA four more times over the following decades. Each time she was rejected for lacking an engineering degree.
The spaceflight that made history
On July 20, 2021, Funk finally got her ride. She launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard from West Texas alongside Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, riding to an altitude of about 100 kilometers (62 miles) on an 11-minute suborbital flight. At 82, she became the oldest person in space, surpassing John Glenn’s record of 77, and remains the oldest woman in space to this day.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get it up there,” Funk said after landing. “I could always beat the guys on what they were doing because I was always stronger.”
Blue Origin called her “a pioneer in every sense of the word.”
“I want to go again, fast,” she told reporters at the post-flight press conference. “I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer.”
The flight made her the only Mercury 13 member ever to reach space and earned her a pair of FAA Commercial Space Astronaut Wings. She received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Michael Collins Trophy for Lifetime Achievement in 2022.
Tributes
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said: “Wally Funk never stopped believing that one day she would reach space. Her passion for flight, perseverance, and love of exploration will continue to inspire generations of Americans. Godspeed, Wally.”
Grapevine city councilwoman Duff O’Dell, Funk’s close friend and caregiver, was by her side when she died. “Wally Funk’s unwavering determination proves that dreams have no expiration date,” O’Dell said. “Her courage, resilience, and groundbreaking achievements continue to inspire young people, especially girls, to pursue careers in science, aviation, and space exploration.”
Funk never married and had no children. She published her memoir, Higher Faster Longer: My Life in Aviation and My Quest for Space Flight, in 2020. Into her 80s, she continued teaching flying every Saturday.
Her place in history is unique: the woman denied spaceflight by the system in the 1960s, who outlived every barrier put in front of her, earned a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman in space, and proved that the arc of a life can bend toward the stars.