Wally Funk Quotes

Well, ‘aerospace‘ was really not a name in my young life. Flying airplanes was. And I got my first try at flying – just pure flying – by flying my ‘Superman‘ cape off my daddy‘s barn when I was about 5 years old.

My first ride in an airplane was at nine years of age, and it was wonderful: the freedom, the smell of the exhaust, the air going over my hair… It was me. It was part of me.

I wanted to go into exploration. I’ve always been an explorer in my youth.

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

I think we all know what actually happened. It was a good old boy network, and there was no such thing as a good old girl network.

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

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

I’ve been flying forever and I have 19,600 flying hours.

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

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.

Everything that the FAA (the Federal Aviation Administration) has, I’ve got the license for.

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

I had to drink radioactive water.

If I were growing up today, I’d want to be a Navy SEAL.

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.

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

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.

I’ve had a great life. And I want that one more thing, to be up in a Virgin Galactic spaceship with Sir Richard Branson.

I know that my body and my mind can take anything that any space outfit wants to give me – high altitude chamber test, which is fine; centrifuge test, which I know I can do five and six G’s. These things are easy for me.

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’ve never been bitter.

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’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.

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

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

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.

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 was brought up that when things don’t work out, you go to your alternative.

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.

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

A skiing accident got me into all this. Since I was a physical education major and this limited by physical activity. I took up flying.

I took probably about six or seven different tests throughout the U.S. Then I went to Russia and took the cosmonaut tests. I beat all the guys.

I like to do things that nobody has ever done.

I’m a happy kid.

I was a very, very curious kid.