Wally Funk’s relationship with flight began early. A nine-year-old taking her first lesson sets a different trajectory than most. It wasn’t just a hobby. It became an obsession.
Then came the crash.
At sixteen, a skiing accident sidelined her. Recovery is boring. It forces introspection. For Funk, it forced a return to the cockpit. She didn’t just pick up flying again. She mastered it. By seventeen, she held her pilot’s license.
Most people struggle to get a driver’s license at seventeen. She was already airborne.
Her career in aviation followed a path that would eventually intersect with NASA. But not in the way history remembers. She became one of the “Mercury 13.” A group of women who passed the same physiological tests as the Mercury Seven astronauts. They were ready. They were qualified.
They were never invited.
This isn’t just a story about a pilot. It’s a story about a door that was locked. And about the woman who kept kicking it open anyway.
The Mercury 13 Protocol
Why did NASA test women? They didn’t want to. The tests were initially designed to ensure male astronauts could withstand extreme G-forces and isolation. But someone realized the same stressors would apply to female bodies. So they ran the numbers. The results were inconclusive, to say the least.
Dr. John H. Gibbon and Dr. Paul R. Williams took the lead. They recruited thirty-five women. Twenty-five passed the initial screening. These were the Mercury 13.
Funk was among them.
The tests were brutal. They mirrored those given to the male astronauts. Spinning in a centrifuge. Sensory deprivation. High-altitude pressure chambers. The women performed just as well. Some performed better. They showed greater endurance and lower heart rates under stress.
This data should have changed everything.
It should have proved that gender was not a barrier to spaceflight. But the political climate of the 1960s was rigid. NASA was a military-adjacent organization. It valued tradition. It valued a specific image of the astronaut: white male, military test pilot.
Why the Space Program Said No
If the women passed the tests, why weren’t they sent to space? The answer lies in bureaucracy. And ego.
NASA Administrator James Webb met with the women. He told them politely that their time would come. It was a polite no. A deferral that never materialized. The Mercury Seven were already committed. The program had momentum. Changing course to include women required resources they didn’t want to spend. And political capital they didn’t want to risk.
So the women went home.
Funk returned to aviation. She flew air ambulances. She delivered mail. She kept her license current. She waited for the space race to mature enough to include her. It never did.
The Long Wait
Decades passed. The Mercury 13 faded from public memory. They became a footnote. A “what if” that historians would occasionally dredge up.
But Funk didn’t fade. She kept flying. She kept living.
In 2021, at the age of 82, she finally went to space.
Not as a pilot. Not as a commander
