Jeff Bezos goes into space. Day Two: Blastoff
It was the day Mary Wallace (Wally) went to Funk space.
Yes, yes, yes, Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was also in the capsule, along with 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, the first paying customer. And Jeff’s brother, who he called “the funniest man in space,” made a compliment to a large number of experienced space journalists in West Texas today. (It is their evidence
But while sending the world’s richest man into space a striking gambit, and a milestone in the advent of commercial space tourism, Wally Funk is sui generis. This week, in 1960, in a story that is being told and retrieved in a thousand media outlets, in 1960, Funk was part of the original Mercury 13, a team trained to be the first female astronauts. But NASA would not sign the program, and for the past 60 years, Funk, an expert pilot and a responsible aircraft safety researcher, has become obsessed with the denied spacecraft seat. In 2010, he signed up for