Quotes from Wally Funk

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I applied to NASA four times. And finally, they said, Wally, you know, we're sorry, but you don't have an engineering degree. I said, well, I'll get one.

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

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.

Higher, faster, longer - that is my motto.

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 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've never met a stranger.

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.

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

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.

And I didn't do dolls... I did outside stuff.

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