Dream Come True for 82-Year-Old Woman as She’s Selected to Travel With Jeff Bezos to Space
- An 82-year-old woman, Wally Funk, has been picked as one of the guests to follow Jeff Bezos to the moon
- The woman who has trained thousands of people to fly aircraft had always wanted to fly to space
- With the selection, her decades-long dream just came to pass years after she trained to be an astronaut in 1961
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If you wait long enough, your dreams might just become realities. It did for Wally Funk, an 82-year-old woman who had always wanted to fly to space.
The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, has invited her to join his space ship which will be leaving the earth on Tuesday, July 20.
Source: Instagram
With this, the 82-year-old woman will be taking the fourth spot on the maiden flight of New Shepard spacecraft along with Bezos, Mark Bezos, and the man who paid over $28 million (N11,515,000,000) for the opportunity, CNN reports.
A woman with flight experience
In a post on Bezos’ Instagram page, a video captured the moment he revealed to Wally that she would be joining them on the travel. She was very excited about it all.
It should be noted that the woman has over 19,600 hours of flying aircraft and she has in her younger years tutored more than 3,000 people to become pilots.
A professional pilot
Her dream of becoming a pilot in 1961 was cut short. This was despite the fact that she was selected as part of a NASA Mercury 13 program which was aimed at training women for space.
She even performed better than her male counterparts as she was able to beat the arduous training session of staying inside a tank for more than 10 hours.
Wally said:
"I got ahold of NASA four times, and said 'I want to become an astronaut,' but nobody would take me. I didn't think I would ever get to go up. Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, 'Wally, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what, doesn't matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it,' and I like to do things that nobody's ever done before."
Watch the moment Bezos told her she is going with them below:
We compiled some of the reactions below:
janewells said:
"This is wonderful."
awoyemi_ta said:
"This is awesome and thoughtful, Jeff!!!"
gomadnow said:
"Brilliant! Love this so much, @jeffbezos Incredible choice. The right choice. So well deserved and a step forward for women!"
uncle_ruu said:
"Don't leave me behind next time when you go to the moon."
Petition against Bezos grows stronger
Meanwhile, it was earlier reported that a petition to make Bezos remain in space when he visits next month has gathered 138,917 signatures three weeks after it was created on Change.org.
The creator of the petition, Ric Geiger, titled it “Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth,” stating that people of his wealth level shouldn't exist on earth or in space.
He wrote:
"Billionaires should not exist…on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there.”
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Source: YEN.com.gh
Naa Ayeley Aryee Naa Ayeley is a creative writer with over ten years of experience in journalism and media. She started writing for YEN in 2017 as an editor on the entertainment desk and later became a monitoring editor.
Aba Afful (Copyeditor) Maame Aba serves as a copy editor at YEN.com.gh. She naturally enjoys working with words and has an eye for quality content. She has a keen interest in cyberspace and wants to see YEN.com.gh produce more impactful, thought-provoking, and error-free content. Aba has five years of experience as a content writer, blogger, author, and proofreader. She graduated from the Ghana Institute of Journalism in 2017. She joined the team in 2021.
