Why One Space Tourist Felt 'Let Down' By Her First Flight

Funk’s first foray into space travel came courtesy of Blue Origin. That is, of course, the spaceflight company set up by Amazon creator and multi billionaire Jeff Bezos. For 21 years the entrepreneur has been in pursuit of commercial space travel, and on July 20, 2021 he finally sent the rocket, New Shepard, into sub-orbit.

The space race has shifted from being run between nations decades ago to being fought by billionaires. And Funk is among only a clutch of people who have been involved in both eras. Yet despite her long wait to fly into what qualifies as “space,” the pilot was kind of left a little blue by the excursion.

Funk wasn’t the only passenger on the spaceflight, though. Because Bezos was onboard, too, and he described the experience as the “best day ever.” They were joined by Mark Bezos, the Amazon man’s younger brother, as well as the youngest person to ever take a trip into space, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen. 

At 82, Funk briefly held the record as the oldest person to have ever made the trip into space. And this was only recently broken by William Shatner at a whopping 90 years of age. But Funk's age isn't what makes her a trailblazer. For more than six decades the aviation pioneer has broken through boundaries set for female astronauts as well as pilots. Plus her spaceflight journey began as the result of a devastating accident in 1956.

The impact affected her back, crushing two vertebrae. And the prognosis at the time was not good: the then-17-year-old lost her ability to walk and was told she would never regain it. But what doctors hadn’t counted on was Funk’s resilience. 

During her rehabilitation, Funk started taking aviation training. This had been suggested by a guidance counselor to take her mind off things. The budding pilot described her first foray to author Stephanie Nolen in a biography on the first female astronauts, Promised The Moon. As Funk recalled, “The bug bit and that was it.”

Funk got her pilot’s license before she even turned 18. And she would take any opportunity she could to get up in the air. She even made a night flight when people thought she was at a dance, for example. Over the years she clocked up 19,600 hours in the skies – around 817 days non-stop – and tutored over 3,000 other pilots.

Before she’d even graduated college, Funk earned recognition for her flying talents. As the airport manager handed her a trophy acknowledging her as the best pilot, he said, “Mark my words, if ever a woman flies into space it will be Wally or one of her students.” So at 21, Funk appeared to be on the cusp of exactly that.

And after reading a feature in Life magazine, showing women about to venture into space, Funk got to work. She contacted everyone she could find relating to the article: the woman pictured floating in an isolation tank, the hospital that performed the tests, and the doctors involved. One of those doctors happened to be Dr. William Lovelace who designed the tests for the first U.S. astronauts. 

As Funk explained in her letter to Dr. Lovelace, “I am most interested in these tests to become an astronaut, this has been ever since I learned to fly.” And the youngster’s pleas must have resonated with the doctor’s team. Why? Because Funk landed herself a spot on his Woman in Space Program despite her being below their required age of 24.

Dr. Lovelace devised the Woman in Space Program’s tests to measure female suitability for space travel. This was 1961 after all. Tests included induced vertigo and a spell in a sensory deprivation tank. Funk’s 10 hours in the chamber was brought to an end after she fell asleep, and the researchers wanted to leave the laboratory and make their way home.

The research identified that the women who took part in the program were just as or, in some cases, more capable than their male contemporaries. All of the female pilots had spent hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in the air. And Funk stood out as one of the best.  

But Funk never made it as an astronaut. Nor did any of the other women on the program. Because the initiative was trashed due to the era’s race to send a man into space. And while the Soviet Union did send female astronaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in 1963, it would be another 20 years before NASA sent a woman of their own.

Not much was known about Funk or her trailblazing cohorts until relatively recently. Many refer to them as the Mercury 13. But the women involved called themselves the First Lady Astronaut Trainees, or FLATs. And today they are held in high regard by women in the space industry on account of what happened to them. 

But Funk wasn’t even mad when the program was shut down. She told the New York Times in July 2021, “I was young and I was happy. I just believed it would come. If not today, then in a couple of months.” So in 1962 she contacted NASA twice to get involved in their Gemini missions. She wasn’t successful. 

And Funk made four applications overall to train as an astronaut, each time with no success. The reason? She was told it was because she’d never obtained an engineering degree. A mere fact, although the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962, John Glenn, also didn’t have one when he made it onto the Mercury program.

Funk would spend a further six decades in pursuit of her space travel dream. As she explained, “I was brought up that when things [don’t] work out, you go to your alternative.” So the would-be astronaut bought a ticket to fly on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight for an eye-watering $200,000 in 2010. But it wasn’t this billionaire that would shoot her into orbit for the first time. 

Because in an apparent display of civilian space race one-upmanship, it was Jeff Bezos who issued an invitation to Funk to board his New Shepard flight. In a video posted on Instagram breaking the news to Funk, the entrepreneur explained, “No one has waited longer.”

Funk responded, “I can’t tell people watching how fabulous I feel to have been picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip.” She also anticipated that she would “love every second” of her adventure. Her review of the trip after it returned to Earth, however, suggested some sense of disappointment. 

Blast off for the flight happened at 9.11am on July 20, 2021 from its base in Van Horn, West Texas. When it reached a height of 47 miles, the rocket separated from the passengers’ capsule. The Bezos brothers, Daeman and Funk’s pod then continued to soar beyond the 62 mile border where outer space begins.

As New Shepard reached its maximum altitude of 66.5 miles, the passengers unstrapped from their seats to float around the cabin. And they enjoyed around four minutes of weightlessness, experiencing views of the Earth and the darkness of space through the pod’s large windows. Mr. Bezos and his guests even took the opportunity to play games aboard their space flight.

Taking advantage of the lack of gravity, the flight’s passengers threw balls to each other before Bezos asked, “Who wants a Skittle?” They then challenged each other to catch the candy in their mouths. “You have a very happy crew up here, I want you to know,” the Amazon founder commented.

Back on Earth, the flight’s passengers convened for a press conference. Bezos said, “Oh my God! My expectations were high and they were dramatically exceeded.” But not everyone aboard the flight was quite as gushing about the experience as the billionaire businessman who had made it all possible.

You see, Funk was the passenger aboard New Shepard with the most experience of space and flying. And her involvement had given her certain expectations that the Blue Orbit program didn’t quite live up to. So although she was grateful for the experience, she didn’t hold herself back from being candid. 

As Funk described in the press conference, “We went right on up and I saw darkness. I thought I was going to see the world but we weren’t quite high enough.” Onboard footage captured during the flight illustrates the former pilot’s point. Anyone expecting to see the whole sphere through the capsule’s window would have been disappointed.

Here on Earth we’re used to seeing images of our planet taken from outer space. And in recent times many of those may have been captured from the International Space Station. But that is located at an altitude four times higher than what New Shepard reached, and so its view of our planet is vastly different to what these space tourists saw.

In a video shot from the spacecraft, the curve of the Earth’s horizon and the furthest reaches of its atmosphere were visible. It stood in contrast to the darkness surrounding the pod. But, as Funk emphasized, their altitude wasn’t high enough to get a glimpse of the entire globe at once. And her assessment didn’t end there.

Because, in keeping with her astronaut training experience, Funk had hoped to “do a lot more rolls and twists and so forth.” Room aboard the capsule, however, was confined. The former pilot explained, “There was not quite enough room for all four of us to do all those things.” 

In the footage released by Blue Origins, one passenger asks, “Can you move your head a little, Wally, for us?” But if there appeared to be little room for those aboard New Shepard’s first commercial flight, these guests were lucky. You see, the cabin was made to accommodate six adults, so space for future adventurers will be even tighter.

Daeman’s take on the experience was more positive. As the project’s first paying customer, he said the trip “felt way cooler than it looked.” The student earned his place on the flight after the winner of an auction for a place pulled out “due to scheduling conflicts.” 

In a further comment on the experience, Funk confessed, “I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer.” The whole flight, in fact, lasted little more than 10 minutes. Three parachutes had slowed the capsule’s descent to Earth, where a blast of air cushioned its landing.

“Everyone on the ground was way more emotional than we were,” Daeman explained. “We were just having fun.” Whatever the student’s experience and motivations for making the trip to sub-orbit, he was adamant that he’d got his money’s worth. But the project wasn’t without criticism, nonetheless.

Bezos was quick to thank “every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.” And while his sentiment may have been well intentioned, it still provoked a backlash. Critics accused the billionaire’s escapades as being of no scientific value and an unnecessary strain on the environment.

But the entrepreneur had already defended himself in an interview with the Insider website in April 2018. Bezos said, “The solar system can easily support a trillion humans. And if we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power... That’s the world that I want my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren to live in.” 

Yet many see the program as part of a rich boy’s battle for superiority. It’s surely no coincidence that fellow billionaire CEO Richard Branson’s first commercial space flight took place weeks before New Shepard launched. That the British businessman made the announcement after Bezos confirmed his plans, too, suggests there’s one-upmanship at play.

Some, then, see Bezos’ invitation to Funk as mere posturing to his billionaire space rival. Others see it as the female aviator finally getting the recognition she deserves after decades of disappointment. NASA astronaut Cady Coleman took it as exactly that, as well as honoring the women so often overlooked for their work in both space and flight.

Dr. Coleman made a suggestion to the New York Times as to what Bezos’ invitation meant. She said, “Wally, you matter. And what you’ve done matters. And I honor you.” She also stated, “When Wally flies, we all fly with her.” Others, however, were vexed that men still seemingly get to decide what women can achieve. Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz was particularly scathing.

Walkowicz said, “On the one hand, I am thrilled for her that she is getting to live this dream she has held for so long. On the other hand, her individually being granted this opportunity does nothing to address any of the reasons she was previously excluded from going to space.” 

Many women in the field of space and aviation hold Funk in high regard to this day. And the octogenarian’s excitement at finally realizing her lifelong dream was obvious. After warmly thanking her host, she said in the post-flight press conference, “It was great, I loved it. I can hardly wait to go again!”