Wally Funk

“My feelings are 'Godspeed, John Glenn.' But I feel badly that he took a spot away from a young astronaut who had probably waited three or four years for that slot. He's already had his ticker-tape parade.”

“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.”

“Russia will have a woman in space before the United States calls for a crash program for women astronauts.”

“I'm just disappointed the folks never took a picture of me when I was five years old jumping off the barn into a haystack with my Superman cape.”

“I'm a happy kid.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm a positive person. Things were cancelled? So what? Wally's going on. Why are people so negative? I'm not a quitter.”

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

“Higher, faster, longer - that is my motto.”

“I was ahead of my time.”

“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 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 love challenges, and I like 'em hard.”

“I like to do things that nobody has ever done.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 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.”