Space cowgirl

Wally Funk was set to become one of the world's first female astronauts - until Nasa pulled the plug on its women's training programme. Only now, age 63, is she finally going into orbit. Sharon Krum reports

Space cowgirl


Wally Funk swears she had no problem drinking the pint of radioactive water. "I just gulped it down," she says, matter of fact. And swallowing three feet of rubber hose? "I just gulped that down too. I can't say it really bothered me."

Nor did the 10 hours in an isolation tank rattle her, although scientists were confident it would. "The tank, oh, it was a piece of cake," she declares in her rich Texas twang. "I didn't hallucinate once, although I did nap a bit.

"The only thing that really hurt was when they injected freezing water (designed to trigger disorientation) into my ear. Now that was really painful. But I wanted to go into space so badly, I would have endured anything."

The year was 1960, and the starter pistol had already fired launching the space race between the Americans and the Russians. But in Houston, the idea of female astronauts was put in the same basket as finding little green men on Mars. "It was the era when women were in the kitchen," says Funk. "Space travel was the old-boy network."

But then the Russians announced they would be sending a woman into orbit, and the US, chastened, snapped to attention. Twenty-five women aviators were secretly selected for testing as astronaut candidates, Funk among them. At an independent clinic operating with the support of Nasa, they were subjected to the same physical and psychological tests as the first male astronauts (the Mercury 7), including the aforementioned radioactive water and other assorted tortures.

"We hadn't been to space yet, so there was no idea what the human body would have to endure in terms of stress. That's why they tested us to the limit."

By the summer of 1961, 13 women had passed the Mercury Astronaut Candidate examinations. Funk came third, her score beating those of many male candidates, including John Glenn (the first American in orbit). But one week before she was due to enter the final phase of training, the women's programme was abruptly cancelled. Funk still has the telegram informing her it was over.

"We didn't use words like sexism in those days," she says. Nasa claims the programme was abandoned after President Eisenhower mandated that all astronauts must come from the air force. As there were no female military pilots in the 1960s, that was very much that. "I was disappointed, but not bitter," Funk says. "I was 21 years old, and I thought, 'Wally, you're still going into space, just not right now.'"

More than 40 years later, "right now" is nearly here. Last week she announced she is going to become the first space tourist in the US, blasting off into orbit in 2005 aboard a rocket currently under construction in Mojave desert.

"I never for a minute thought I wouldn't go," she says. "And when it became clear Nasa wasn't going to take me (Nasa rejected her four times), I knew I would go privately, whatever the cost."

The cost is $2m (£1.4m), and includes 45 days of training in Russia and California (zero gravity, G force), but Funk isn't paying. Her flight, which will launch from a spaceport on the South Pacific island of Tonga, is being sponsored (she can't reveal by whom), but you know that if she had to, she would raise the money herself, whether it meant holding cake sales or running naked through the streets of New York.

While the US millionaire Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist in April 2001, paying $20m for a seat on a Russian rocket, Funk's flight will be the first with a private company. (Nasa balks at the idea of taking civilians to space for joyrides. The Russians need the money.)

InterOrbital Systems, the Californian outfit developing the Neptune Spaceliner rocket, have big plans for the space tourism market, and Funk is to be the jewel in the crown of their business. "After her initial flight we plan to train Wally to become a staff pilot for us, flying other tourists into space," says IOS co-founder Randa Milliron.

"I feel that Wally flying with us is a perfect ending to the injustice she suffered 40 years ago. Forget the Kennedy assassination, the biggest conspiracy of the 60s was keeping women out of space."

Wally Funk's story, with a conclusion that should satisfy both feminists and Hollywood, is a textbook study in indefatigable, American, can-do spirit. Born in Taos, New Mexico, Funk began jumping off the roof of the family barn at five, trying to fly. Her father, who owned a five- and-dime store, fed her obsession by bringing home model airplanes for her to build.

The Funk family lived cheek by jowl with the native Americans, and little Wally learned to hunt, fish, camp and ride a horse alongside them. The result was a girl both self reliant and utterly fearless.

"I first flew in a plane at eight, and by the age of 10 I had mother drive me out to an airstrip to study the planes parked there."

Funk, whose hero was Amelia Earheart, learned to fly at 16. "I knew then I wanted to fly for life." But America had other ideas. She applied to become a commercial pilot at both TWA and Continental, and was rejected with the following excuse: they couldn't hire women because they didn't have a ladies bathroom at the training facility.

Instead, Funk became a flight instructor, and began her working life teaching US Army officers to fly at a military base in Oklahoma. She never married. "I am married to airplanes," she says.

For 40 years she has taught flying, both private and commercial, (she has 16,500 hours in the air and has soloed 800 student pilots), in addition, she became the first female investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board. And she continued to follow every Russian and American mission obsessively, never losing sight of her goal of orbital flight. She was at the launch in 1995 when Eileen Collins became the first female pilot in space. Documentary footage recorded at the time shows Funk in tears as the rocket left the launchpad, crying out: "Go Eileen. Go for all of us."

"I wasn't a bra burner, I'm not a political person," she says now. "I saw there was an old-boys' network, but my philosophy has always been to get over it, and move on."

To prepare herself for a flight that occupied her imagination full time but was barely on the drawing board, in the past decade Funk has self-financed trips to Edwards Air Force Base to fly the Apollo static space simulator, and to Star City in Russia to train in zero-gravity conditions.

When you tell her you find her drive extraordinary, she is embarrassed by the compliment. Funk has a heavy dose of humility. "I just knew I had to keep myself ready for the flight," she says.

When you delicately manoeuvre her to the question of age, she insists she is in top physical shape. Today she lives in Roanoke, Texas, teaches flying every day, restores old cars (she once owned one of the Queen Mother's Rolls), competes in cowgirl action shooting tournaments, and judges air races.

Her first space flight will be only five hours (eventually tourist flights may go to seven days), but it still means thousands of pounds of thrust, five sunrises and sunsets, and finally, the same view John Glenn had.

"What I am already dreaming about is the roar of the take-off, followed by the absolute silence as we go into orbit, and then seeing Earth outside my window," she says. "I wish I could start my training in an hour from now."