79: Elk Heads for Nerds

All right, honey, first and foremost, we need to say a fond farewell to a true American, all right?

Okay.

Wally Funk has passed away at the age of 87.

Sadly, you will probably know Wally Funk as the elderly woman who went up in a rocket with Jeff Bezos in the Jeff Bezos mobile, the Jeff Bezos space mobile.

And that is not, of course, how she should be remembered.

Wally Funk was a American aviator and a legendary one at that.

Wally was born in Texas in 1939.

She learned how to fly as a teenager.

Nice.

She got her license at 20, at 21. joined NASA's Mercury 13 program.

The Mercury 13 program was the program to get women up there in space.

Okay.

And, you know, sadly, NASA did not take it as seriously as they should have taken it.

What? You're kidding.

There was a lot of women who went through that program, sometimes totally smoking the men in the various trials that they had to go through.

I mean, of course.

To be an astronaut.

Wally Funk did about ten and a half hours in the sensory deprivation tank at NASA.

In a row? In a row.

In a row.

Wow.

And John Glenn, three hours.

Suck

it, John Glenn.

Suck it, John Glenn.