by Sue Nelson
Meir spoke fast. It was clear that Wally was struggling to understand what she was saying, as was I. Every so often, we asked her to slow down. The NASA line about the Orion spacecraft and the new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket – part of the Agency’s ‘journey to Mars’ – featured heavily and repeatedly in her answers. She came across as a slick, on-message NASAbot, and sounded as if she’d said it all before hundreds of times – which she probably had. Astronauts are always in demand by the media. The appearance of automation was a shame because, like the flight surgeon and the flight director, Meir was phenomenally impressive.
An assistant professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Meir was a biologist with a doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, specialising in how animals adapted to extreme environments and a Masters in space studies from the International Space University. Her background included working for Lockheed Martin’s Human Research Facility and serving as an aquanaut crew member in the Aquarius underwater habitat for Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO mission. She dived, climbed mountains, cycled and skied. Meir was also a pilot. So far, so Wally. Meir’s first trip into space will be to the International Space Station, but in the future this woman could, theoretically, also become the first woman on the red planet. Wally asked Meir if she wanted to go to Mars.
‘Sure, once NASA designs a programme I’d be happy to go delve into the spirit of exploration and get us back safely,’ said Meir chirpily.
‘Has any woman inspired you?’
‘No, not really.’
It was an honest answer but a disconcerting one. When Meir admitted she didn’t know anything about the Mercury 13 either, I was disappointed, especially as she appeared uninterested in learning about them too. Wally went uncharacteristically quiet. Afterwards, instead of the usual elation that often accompanied meeting an astronaut, regardless of whether they’d been in space yet or not, our spirits were somewhat dampened. Meir represented the future and, perhaps due to living in an era with greater opportunities for women, seemed not to have considered the sacrifices made by women within her field in the past. Women who had pushed hard to make the opportunities that had come Meir’s way possible. Women like Wally.
A few years after our interview, Meir learned how to fly jets – something Wally and the Mercury 13 were desperate to do (officially) over fifty years ago. Meir’s experience at this point sounded almost superhuman, but that’s because, compared to you or me, she is. If entry requirements into the exclusive astronauts’ club were high in the 1950s and 1960s, they are even higher now. Twenty-first-century astronauts are overwhelmingly qualified. Today it is no longer enough to be a great pilot.
It was touch-and-go whether we’d make it to the airport. North West Regional was only a few miles away from Grapevine, Dallas, but we were heading there in Wally’s camper van: a vehicle close to retirement, with a driver long-past retirement. As usual, Wally refused to wear a seat belt.
Wally was taking me flying. She leaned behind my seat to check if she’d brought a second pair of headphones for the flight, and every so often the van swerved gently across the road.
‘It’s okay,’ she reassured me after I objected. ‘I’m not crossing the line.’
The sooner we got to the airfield, the better.
I was not a complete novice in a small aircraft, thanks to an assignment from the Sunday Times’ travel section to spend a week learning to fly in La Rochelle, France. Despite the beautiful location, it was a surprisingly tough week. There was a huge amount to learn and absorb, and as the runway approached on my first landing attempt, I panicked, lifted my hands from the control wheel and used them to cover my eyes. By the end of the week I could pilot the Cessna from La Rochelle to Nantes with the instructor beside me. It was an incredible experience. I loved flying, and still do; but even so, it was clear that even twenty years ago I had not been a natural pilot, and preferred being served a glass of wine and some nuts as a passenger instead.
To my delight, the blue-and-white airplane Wally led me to was a familiar one. The only type, in fact, I could recognise. ‘This is a Cessna 172,’ said Wally. ‘It’s a 1972 model, which is quite old.’
The old part was not reassuring.
Wally spotted a guy, Eddie, in the distance. She pointed to me and shouted: ‘She’s going to be filming part of this.’
Even after all the audio interviews we’d done, and despite my reminders, Wally still defaulted to television instead of radio. She used a small ladder to climb onto the wing to check the gas. ‘This is the Wally stick,’ she said holding up what looked like a drum stick. ‘I’m putting it in the tank to see how much gas is there. Seven inches. That tells me the tank is full. Then I check the oil …’
Back on the ground, Wally checked the flaps at the back edge of the wings, and examined the top of the wings and the ailerons at the tips. She then tapped the elevators and the rudders. Eddie wandered over after hearing me chatting to Wally.
‘Your accent doesn’t sound like you’re from Alabama,’ he said.
‘She’s the head BBC girl,’ said Wally.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been promoted, and I didn’t want to explain about being an independent supplier for the BBC either. ‘No, I’m one of the minions.’
‘Can we hear you on the BBC?’
‘Occasionally. Very occasionally …’
‘I’ve met a lot of journalists through knowing Wally,’ he said. ‘I’ve flown a cameraman once for CBS News, filming Wally.’
After Wally checked the ailerons and the elevators ‘to see that they go up and down smoothly’, she asked me to give her a hand getting the aircraft wheels out of the muddy ground from under its shelter. The three of us got into position around the plane. ‘Push on that strut, honey.’
The idea, from my viewpoint, was to record the actuality of Wally flying. This meant sitting there working and recording. Her idea was for me to do the flying. She explained it to Eddie. ‘Maybe I’ll do a couple of take-offs and landings at Alliance airport’s runway. Maybe I’ll have her do a couple of turns. She wants me to talk but I want her to talk to the Tower.’
‘There’s a bit of a power struggle going on, as you can tell,’ I informed Eddie.
‘If you don’t want to do it, then you don’t do it,’ Wally responded. Eddie left.
‘I don’t mind having a go, but I want to hear you. Which side does the pilot normally sit?’
‘Always to the left.’
‘Shouldn’t you go in the left seat?’
‘I’m right here. I’m always to the right.’ She handed me a cushion. ‘I want you to sit down and see if this is comfortable, and you see over the nose of the plane.’
‘But you’ll be able to fly it as well, won’t you?’
‘No. You’re going to fly.’
‘I can’t operate this,’ I said pointing to the audio equipment, ‘and fly at the same time.’
‘I’m kidding you.’
‘I’m feeling quite nervous.’
‘Stop it,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t get nervous with me. I’m the boss here. You were the boss earlier.’ Wally grinned.
Inside the plane, I got comfortable. ‘Now there’s a lever under here somewhere,’ said Wally. ‘I want you to get just so your toes are on the rudders. Keep your heels on the floor. Just relax. Atta girl. Alright. Here’s your full sign. November Seven Four Seven Victor Hotel, ten o’clock and it’s overcast and windy.’
Wally began scrabbling under her seat. ‘I can’t find them.’
‘Find what?’
‘I have a pair of underpants.’
What?
‘A clean pair of underpants. They help me keep my headset clean. I put it around the headset so I don’t hurt the wire.’
‘I got a bit nervous there when you said you had a spare pair of pants.’
There was a pause. ‘I didn’t understand what you just said.’
‘It’s just as well.’
Unfortu
nately for Wally, my aircraft headphones weren’t working. It didn’t bother me because I needed to wear my own headphones to monitor the recording levels. But it bothered Wally.
‘Now to start an aircraft. The first thing we have to do is push the mixture control all the way rich so we have gas going all the way to the carburettor. You’re going to prime it.’
We taxied to the runway and were almost ready to fly. ‘Gas is on, trim set ... that’s off. Okay, we’re going to turn the master switch on. Atta girl. Both of them. Now I’m going to put my feet up on the brakes. Let’s try and get this thing started,’ and Wally yelled a throaty, ‘Yeah! We got it started …’
This was, I realised, a potential start to the programme. What better way to begin when the presenter was a pilot who had once aimed at flying even higher? When the airplane lifted off the ground I experienced a wonderful sensation of freedom. No wonder Wally had chosen a career in aviation. Flying is quite a rush.
We circled above Texas at 2,000 feet. ‘Now we’re over Cowtown,’ she announced, giving the local name for Fort Worth. ‘There’s the stadium … All those buildings down there belong to Ross Perot. He’s a wealthy man. Now I’m going to take you in for a landing …’
That night, as usual, I made backup copies of all our recordings. It was clear by then that people would either love Wally’s enthusiastic, idiosyncratic but somewhat shouty delivery, or that the programme would be a complete disaster.
3
Cape Canaveral
There were more brands of cranberry juice on the supermarket shelf than expected. I re-read Wally’s email. Unusually, it was not in block capitals. On request, I typed using block capitals for her emails too. It felt as if I was permanently shouting. The irony.
‘Okay, the cranberry deal is R.W. Knudsen cranberry juice concentrate, eight fluid ounces,’ she instructed. ‘You might not find it. A regular bottle is okay, just watered down.’
Juice located, I read on. ‘I cannot pack my cookies. I like a box or package of chocolate-chip cookies. I dip them in hot water before I go to sleep.’
It was March 2017, almost a year after our trip to Houston, and not much had changed. Wally was my anxious, controlling, easily bored presenter. I was her anxious, controlling, easily stressed producer.
The food shop was in preparation for Wally’s arrival in Orlando, Florida, that afternoon. Wally’s nutritional requirements tended towards ‘meat and two veg’ – providing those two vegetables were sweet potatoes, green beans or spinach. I added a pack of pork chops alongside the chocolate-chip cookies, potatoes, eggs, oatmeal, bacon, sausages, spinach and green beans in the basket. Compared to British prices, steaks in America were a bargain at twice the size. Wally loved steak. And I loved steak at twice the size. Four steaks went into the basket. During the 1970s, I had grown up in a family where tomato ketchup was considered ‘too spicy’. Since then my food tastes had expanded considerably. Unsure whether I could survive a week with Wally eating food that resembled British food at its plainest, I added fresh garlic and a handful of red chillies to cook for myself.
Hotels had been surprisingly expensive on Florida’s Space Coast, but I’d found a suite at Cocoa Beach with two bedrooms, a living room and kitchen/diner. Wally was excited at the idea of sharing, and the arrangement would help yet another lean radio budget stretch a lot further, especially as we also had a trip to Europe ahead. Since Wally’s oven in Dallas was stacked with pans, I knew her meals were often fruit or a flatbread with lots of beef and spinach from her local Subway. ‘Mother asked me if I wanted to learn how to cook,’ Wally told me, ‘and I said no.’
The only potential problem was that the rooms surrounded a long, enclosed courtyard. There was a small pool, barbeque pits and areas to sit or play deck quoits. Most people were in family groups, wearing shorts or swimsuits, drinking sodas and beers. The noise was considerable. We were there to work. Everyone else was on holiday. Wally, I worried, might not like it.
We were in Cape Canaveral to make another BBC World Service radio programme. Wally’s distinctive delivery on our Women with the Right Stuff radio documentary made listeners gasp in astonishment – fortunately in a good way. People had not only enjoyed hearing about the history of women in space, they had loved Wally’s tremendous enthusiasm, natural warmth and odd, shouty delivery. The programme had almost brought me to my knees during the making and editing, but it had been a success. In the week that the documentary went online, it was the BBC World Service’s second-most-downloaded podcast, with millions of listeners. As a result, the same commissioning editor had wanted to pair us up again, provided the subject matter was right. It didn’t take long to come up with an idea.
The world was approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landings. Six Apollo missions touched down on the lunar surface, starting with Apollo 11 in July 1969, and ending with Apollo 17 in December 1972. Although there was still much to learn, the Moon was considered a ‘been there, done that’ destination by many within the space community. Lately, however, there had been a resurgence in the idea of returning to the Moon. China had landed a robotic rover on the lunar surface in December 2013 – the first one since the Russian Luna 24 rover in 1976 – and was now preparing for further missions, including landing people. The European Space Agency’s director general, Jan Woerner, had publicly put forward his hopes for the construction of a ‘Moon village’ and, although no one knew in which direction the new Trump administration would steer NASA, several US companies already had their sights set on the Moon.
There had been an increasing realisation that the Moon was more than a source of scientific wonder, exploration and artistic inspiration. It was also prime real estate, and represented a potential business opportunity. As government space agencies thought seriously about returning to our nearest astronomical neighbour and the technologies required to facilitate a potential base, a new frontier had opened up for the private sector. Commercial spaceflight companies wanted to open up the experience of space to people like Wally, but others were thinking much bigger than flying above the Earth’s atmosphere and back again.
The Google Lunar X-Prize had kick-started a commercial race for the lunar surface by offering $30 million in prize money, challenging companies to put a robotic spacecraft on the Moon that could travel 500 metres and transmit high-definition images and video back to Earth. Registrations closed at the end of 2010. The deadline to land, like real space missions, kept being extended, but five teams from around the world had reached the shortlist.
The combination of government-funded and commercial interest across the world in returning to the Moon also offered an opportunity for women on several levels. Apart from behind-the-scenes careers in science, engineering and mission operations, one side-effect of all these exciting plans would be that, at some stage in the near future, history would celebrate the first woman on the Moon. That was my angle for covering this renewed race. The title was easy: The First Woman on the Moon. Who better to present it than a woman who, if history had been more enlightened, could have been the first woman on the lunar surface herself in the late 1960s or early 1970s: Wally Funk?
In an alternate universe, Wally had already succeeded in going to space. One of the novellas that makes up Ian Sales’ Apollo Quartet had reimagined America’s space history. In the novelist’s world, Dr Lovelace’s Woman in Space programme hadn’t been cancelled. Women were needed because many American pilots were still fighting a fictionally prolonged Korean war. It resulted in ‘Commander Funk’ and other women from the Mercury 13 realising their dreams.
At one of Orlando’s airport gates – our agreed meeting place – everyone came through except Wally. I waited. And waited, until an announcement from the airport speakers requested: ‘Would Sue Nelson please meet Wally at the baggage carousel.’
There she stood, arms outstretched as usual, shouting my name. She wore a dark green shirt with a Space Shuttle monogram on one side and Wally on the other, her diamond-studded plane br
ooch, a red scarf around her neck and a Mars Science Lab mission patch on the right-hand back pocket of her cargo pants. As usual, she had travelled light: hand luggage including a small black suitcase and a red holdall, both labelled with ‘Wally Funk’ embroidered patches. At Cocoa Beach, she scrutinised the hotel’s small check-in area and addressed the receptionist. ‘Do you have US Today?’
They didn’t. ‘Oh.’ The disappointment was clear. This was not a good start. ‘I like reading US Today. Most hotels have them in reception for free.’
‘The hotel across the street has them,’ said the receptionist. Like me, and everyone else it seemed, here was someone eager to please Wally. ‘They do free tea and coffee too.’
‘I don’t drink tea or coffee. But thank you.’
Inside the apartment, she did a recce of the rooms. ‘You’ve put the chocolate-chip cookies on my pillow. I love that!’
Wally removed several pressed cotton shirts from her suitcase. Each one was folded with military precision. Bottles of vitamins and health pills were lined up neatly by the bathroom sink, and her toothbrush was placed carefully on a flannel. My cosmetics were haphazardly scattered across the rest of the shelf. She glanced into my bedroom. Admittedly, it looked as if it had been ransacked. She appraised the clothes, papers, notebooks, microphones, batteries and recording equipment scattered across the two twin beds, a bedside table and a chest of drawers … and said nothing.
She disappeared outside to explore while I packed the fridge and cupboards with my food supplies. Her distinctive high-decibel voice travelled far enough that I was always aware whenever she was shooting the breeze with strangers. No one remained a stranger for long with Wally. It was one of the things I admired about her. She returned with a copy of USA Today and a cup of free coffee for me, from a hotel neither of us were staying at. I appreciated the gesture.