82-year-old-woman on first commercial space flight

AFP – Pioneer aviator Wally Funk, 82, will accompany billionaire Jeff Bezos  on July 20 on the company’s first manned space flight Blue Origin, the company announced Thursday.

The trip comes 60 years late for Funk, who was one of the “Mercury 13”, the first women trained by the US space agency NASA to fly into space between 1960 and 1961,  but excluded for gender reasons.

“They told me I did the job better and faster than any of the men,” Funk said in a video posted on Bezos’s Instagram account.

“I said I wanted to be an astronaut. But no one wanted to take me. I didn’t think I would ever go there, ”she said.

“No one has waited that long,” Bezos wrote. “Welcome to the crew, Wally.”

Funk, who was also the first female inspector for the United States aviation agency, the FAA, will become the oldest person to go into space when she travels aboard the New Shepard launch vehicle along with Bezos and his brother Mark.

She will also be accompanied by an unidentified auction winner, who paid $28 million for the seat.

The launch is scheduled on the date of the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is scheduled to take off in a desert in West Texas for a 10-minute journey, four of which passengers will pass over the Karman Line, which internationally marks the start of space, 100 km above the earth.

Passengers can then float in weightlessness for a few minutes and observe the curvature of the Earth.

Blue Origin’s first manned flight comes against a backdrop of fierce competition in the field of private space exploration, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson.