Trailblazing pilot Wally Funk, 82, will join Jeff Bezos this month on the first crewed spaceflight for the billionaire's company Blue Origin, the firm has announced.
The trip is 60 years overdue for Wally Funk, who was one of the Mercury 13 -- the first women trained to fly to space from 1960-1961, but excluded because of gender.
On 20 July she will become the oldest person ever to go to space when she takes part in the journey aboard the New Shepard launch vehicle along with Bezos, his brother Mark and one other traveler.
The Bezos brothers and Funk, who was also the National Transportation Safety Board's first female inspector and a Goodwill ambassador, will be joined by the unnamed winner of an auction who paid 23.6 million euros for another seat on the aircraft.
10 minutes trip
Taking off from a desert in western Texas, the New Shepard trip will last 10 minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognized boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.
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Blue Origin's maiden crewed flight comes in a context of fierce competition in the field of private space exploration -- with Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, all jostling for pole position.
Branson's Virgin Galactic
British billionaire Richard Branson one-upped his rival Jeff Bezos on Thursday, announcing that he too will travel to space -- as many as nine days ahead of the Amazon founder.
Branson's company Virgin Galactic said in a statement that he would be a "mission specialist" aboard the SpaceShipTwo Unity, which will go to space as early as 11 July, "pending weather and technical checks."
The two billionaires have founded rival companies to take tourists on short flights to suborbital space.
