Wally Funk, Aviation Pioneer and Oldest Woman to Travel to Space, Dies at 87
Wally Funk, an indomitable aviation pioneer who became the oldest woman ever to travel to space, passed away on Wednesday, June 8th, at her apartment in an assisted living facility in Grapevine, a suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area in Texas. She was 87 years old. According to her caregiver and City Councilwoman Duff O'Dell, Funk had experienced several falls in recent months and was suffering from an infection in her leg. Her death marks the end of an era — the life of a woman who spent more than seven decades refusing to let gravity, in any of its forms, hold her down.
Funk made headlines across the globe in 2021 when she flew aboard the inaugural crewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, fulfilling a dream that had been deferred for six decades by institutional sexism, bureaucratic gatekeeping, and the rigid structures of Cold War-era space programs. Her story is not merely one of personal triumph — it is a vivid lens through which to examine the history of human spaceflight, the physics of suborbital travel, and the long, painful arc toward equality in science and exploration.
A Woman of Firsts: From the Cockpit to the Cosmos
Born Mary Wallace Funk on February 1st, 1939, she demonstrated an almost preternatural affinity for aviation from a young age. She earned her pilot's license at Stephens College in Missouri and later chose to study education at Oklahoma State University specifically because it boasted an aviation team — the celebrated Flying Aggies. Even among the talented men of that competitive program, Funk distinguished herself. As she recalled in a 2019 interview: "As a Flying Aggie, I could do all the maneuvers as well as the boys, if not better."
After graduating from OSU, she became the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma — a milestone that previewed a career defined by breaking through barriers that were never meant to yield. She subsequently became the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). She owned a flying school in Taos, New Mexico, taught aviation privately to more than 3,000 students, and logged an extraordinary 19,600 hours of flight time — a figure that places her among the most experienced aviators of her generation, male or female.
- First female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma
- First female FAA inspector in the United States
- First female air safety investigator for the NTSB
- Logged over 19,600 hours of flight time
- Taught more than 3,000 people to fly private and commercial aircraft
- Youngest graduate of the Mercury 13 program
- Oldest woman — and, at the time, oldest person — to travel to space
The Mercury 13: A Dream Deferred by Design
In the early 1960s, at the height of the Space Race, Funk became one of 13 female pilots selected for what would become known as the Mercury 13 — a privately funded initiative spearheaded by Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II, the same physician who designed the physical testing protocols for NASA's original Mercury astronaut candidates. The program sought to determine whether the best female pilots in the United States could meet or exceed the physical and psychological benchmarks set by their male counterparts.
The results were extraordinary. The women underwent the same battery of grueling tests administered to the men who would become the celebrated "Mercury Seven" — including stress electrocardiograms, isolation chamber sessions, centrifuge runs, and intense psychological evaluations. Funk herself spent an astonishing 10 hours and 35 minutes in a sensory-deprivation tank, surpassing the record previously set by none other than John Glenn, who would go on to become the first American to orbit the Earth. She was also told she had "done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys."
"She was told by many, many, many men, 'No, you can't do this. No, you can't do that.' And she never got mad about it. She just was more determined." — Duff O'Dell, City Councilwoman and Funk's caregiver
Yet despite their exceptional performance, the women of Mercury 13 were ultimately denied the chance to become astronauts. The cancellation of the program was rooted in both cultural prejudice and structural policy. When NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, it initially cast a wide net for astronaut candidates, considering military pilots, submarine crews, and polar expedition veterans. The sheer volume of potential candidates prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to intervene, narrowing the pool specifically to military test pilots — a category from which women were categorically excluded, since they were barred from combat training at the time.
The geopolitical irony was not lost on observers then or now. While the United States was quietly preventing its most capable female pilots from reaching orbit, the Soviet Union was actively training women as cosmonauts through the Vostok program. On June 16th, 1963 — just two years after the Mercury 13 tests were conducted — Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6, completing 48 orbits of the Earth over nearly three days. The United States would not send a woman to space for another two decades, when Sally Ride flew aboard STS-7 in June 1983.
When NASA finally opened its astronaut corps to women in 1978, Funk applied — and was told she lacked the required engineering degree. She was 39 years old. As she recounted in a 2021 interview with CNN:
"I got a hold of NASA four times, and said, 'I want to become an astronaut,' but nobody would take me. I didn't think I would ever get to go up. Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, 'Wally, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what? [It] doesn't matter what you are. You can still do it if you want to do it.' And I like to do things that nobody's ever done before."
Funk's Historic Flight: The Science of Her Suborbital Journey
In 2021, Funk finally realized her six-decade-old dream when Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos personally invited her to serve as an "honored guest" aboard the NS-16 mission — the first crewed flight of the company's New Shepard vehicle. She was joined by Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student who had purchased a seat at auction. At 82 years old, Funk became the oldest person to travel to space at the time — a record later surpassed by both William Shatner and Ed Dwight, America's first Black astronaut candidate, both of whom flew at age 90. Funk remains, to this day, the oldest woman ever to travel to space.
From a scientific and engineering standpoint, the New Shepard vehicle represents a remarkable achievement in reusable launch technology. The system consists of a booster rocket and a pressurized crew capsule, both designed to be recovered and reflown. On launch day — June 20th, 2021 — the vehicle lifted off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site, known as Launch Site One. The flight lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds in total, with the crew capsule reaching a maximum altitude of approximately 107 kilometers (66.5 miles) above sea level — surpassing the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space set at 100 km by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
During the roughly three to four minutes the capsule spent above the Kármán line, the crew experienced microgravity — the condition of apparent weightlessness that occurs when a spacecraft and its occupants are in free fall together. Unlike the prolonged microgravity exposure of orbital spaceflight, which can result in significant physiological changes including bone density loss, muscle atrophy, and fluid redistribution toward the head, the brief exposure during a suborbital flight presents minimal long-term health risks. For an 82-year-old passenger, this was an important consideration, and Funk's physicians cleared her enthusiastically. The crew also experienced g-forces of several times Earth's normal gravity during both ascent and the capsule's parachute-assisted descent — forces that require physical conditioning to tolerate comfortably.
On launch day, Funk was, by every account, the most animated and enthusiastic member of the crew. She ran up the catwalk to the crew capsule and rang the ceremonial bell with palpable joy — the embodiment of a dream finally made real. At the post-flight press conference, she was characteristically direct:
"I've been waiting a long time to finally get it up there, and I've done a lot of astronaut training through the world — Russia, America — 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. I want to go again, fast. I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer."
A Legacy That Transcends the Boundaries of Earth
The significance of Funk's life and legacy cannot be overstated. She existed at the intersection of aviation history, the Space Age, and the broader civil rights movements of the 20th century. Her story illuminates how much human potential was squandered by the institutional prejudices of her era — and, by extension, how much further science and exploration might have advanced had those barriers never existed. The Mercury 13 women were not curiosities or novelties; they were elite aviators whose physiological data, had it been taken seriously, might have shaped NASA's understanding of human spaceflight physiology decades earlier.
Research has since shown that women may, in certain respects, be better suited for long-duration spaceflight than men. Studies indicate that female astronauts tend to require less food, water, and oxygen, generate less waste, and may experience fewer radiation-related health risks at equivalent doses — findings that carry profound implications for the future of deep space exploration, including crewed missions to Mars. The Mercury 13 women, in other words, were not simply fighting for equality — they were, unknowingly, at the frontier of a scientific question that remains urgently relevant today.
O'Dell captured something essential about Funk's character in a public statement following her passing:
"Wally Funk's unwavering determination proves that dreams have no expiration date. Her courage, resilience, and groundbreaking achievements continue to inspire young people — especially girls — to pursue careers in science, aviation, and space exploration. Grapevine is honored to call Wally Funk one of our own."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted a tribute on X, writing: "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."
Blue Origin, the company that ultimately gave her the stars she had spent a lifetime reaching for, paid tribute in a post on X, calling her "a pioneer in every sense of the word":
"She became the youngest of the Mercury 13, outperforming nearly every test put in front of her, and ultimately, the only one of the thirteen to have ever reached space. On NS-16, 60 years later, Wally made history as the oldest astronaut at the time and remains the oldest woman to ever fly to space. It was a moment six decades in the making. We were humbled to be part of her journey. Her story will continue to inspire generations of future explorers. Fly, Wally, fly."
The city of Grapevine offered its own tribute, noting that Funk "dedicated more than seven decades to aviation, becoming one of the world's most accomplished female pilots and, ultimately, fulfilling her lifelong dream of traveling to space." She was, the city said, "a global symbol of determination, perseverance, and excellence."
