Top 30 Wally Funk Quotes

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 love flying. That’s my job. That’s what I love.

I’ve lived in a man’s world all these wonderful years. I’ve been the only girl in the cockpit, in the conference room, wherever. I have learned how to kick in a lot of doors, and I have dealt with a lot of disappointments. But I will go into space one day, when God thinks it’s right or I make it right.

Russia will have a woman in space before the United States calls for a crash program for women astronauts.

I want to go up there so bad, I’ve had my sights set since 1962.

When I went on to college, I was allowed to take flying, as my mother had dearly loved flying and her father wouldn’t allow her to, so they encouraged me then to go on into my aviation career.

I’ve never been bitter.

You can look up, you can see the stars, the moon and the sun, and you wonder: How does it all work? I didn’t have the answers, but I was thinking about all this floating amongst the stars. That is my objective.

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.

We may get a few trips but it is the coming generation of women who really will perform in outer space.

I like to do things that nobody has ever done.

I’ve never met a stranger.

I’ve been in the Concorde, I’ve seen the curvature of the Earth, the beginning of the darkness. I want more – I want to go up there.

I can’t tell people that are watching how fabulous I feel to have been picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip. I’ll love every second of it.

I’m just disappointed the folks never took a picture of me when I was five years old jumping off the barn into a haystack with my Superman cape.

I was a very, very curious kid.

As a flight instructor 30 years ago, I had quite a few female police officers who wanted to be pilots. But the guys would say ‘no.’ They wanted those jobs to themselves.

I got a hold of NASA, four times, I said, ‘I want to become an astronaut.’ But nobody would take me. I didn’t think that I would ever get to go up.

You never forget the airplane you soloed.

You know me, I go higher, faster, larger, as long as I can.

I went on to Oklahoma State University, who was the best flight school in the United States at that time from the mid ’50s on to the ’70s.

My feelings are ‘Godspeed, John Glenn.’ But I feel badly that he took a spot away from a young astronaut who had probably waited three or four years for that slot. He’s already had his ticker-tape parade.

I can take anything. You can whip me and it won’t bother me.

I get a call – said, do you want to be an astronaut? I said, oh, my gosh, yes. And he said, be here on Monday to take these tests. I had needles stuck in every part of my body, tubes running up my bottom, so I went along with it. It didn’t bother me.

It was the era when women were in the kitchen. Space travel was the old-boy network.

I’m a happy kid.

I thought I was going to see the world but we weren’t quite high enough.

I’m still kicking in doors to keep on going.

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.

I had to drink radioactive water.