Wally Funk's Race for Space

by Sue Nelson

  Even though it was evening, the air was warm and children played and screeched happily outside our room. It was especially loud because Wally had wedged the door open with a chair. She went to the doorway and I prepared for a complaint. To be fair, as I know from experience as a broadcaster myself, most presenters and producers preferred their own space.

  One of the few times I shared a room with a BBC radio producer, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was also for budgetary reasons. We were making a documentary in 2004 on the Harvard Computers – the poorly paid women who measured the brightness of stars on photographic glass plates at the Harvard Observatory from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. Many of these women, including a maid and former school teacher from Scotland, became important astronomers in their own right. It was a great story. In fact, I had recently reviewed Dava Sobel’s superb bestselling book, The Glass Universe, about these women for the scientific journal Nature. Over ten years earlier I had tried to sell the same book to a publisher in the UK, but was told ‘nobody buys women’s history’. Like Wally’s attempt to become an astronaut in 1960, it was a case of right idea, wrong time.

  Sharing a room, however, was a test of everybody’s relationship. It worked for me and my producer, and we became friends. Since working with Wally the previous year, our professional relationship had also morphed into a friendship, but I was unsure how she’d react to the accommodation. There was not much I could do if she didn’t like it, either. The hotel was full. If a shared apartment surrounded by noisy, holidaying families was a mistake, we were in trouble.

  ‘This is great, honey,’ she beamed. ‘Did you ask for this room or did we just luck out? We’re right here with people and that’s what I needed.’

  ‘You’re okay with the noise?’

  ‘If we were looking out somewhere else I wouldn’t have liked it. I like to be with people. That’s why I’m having a hard time in Grapevine.’

  Her home in Grapevine, Texas, was in a pleasant residential area, but her closest companions physically, I realised, were probably the cows. ‘The churches,’ she said, ‘the people I try to help. Some of them know who I am and that I’m there to help them. I don’t bathe them, but I take them places. One girl has a walker …’

  She trailed off. ‘Now who are we meeting again tomorrow, honey? I want to go over those notes you gave me and do my homework. I want to do my best.’

  She was incredible: a seventy-eight-year-old single woman who helped the elderly, enjoyed being around people and took researching and making a radio programme seriously. I could have kissed her. Instead, I informed her we’d be heading for Moon Express in the morning so that she could read up on our first interviewee, practise her radio links and go through the questions. She sat in front of the TV repeating her introduction: ‘Bob Richards is the CEO of the American company Moon Express…’, each time with a different emphasis on a different word.

  Moon Express was the first private company granted permission by the United States to go to the Moon. Founded by entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and the space industry, it was formed in 2010 with the intention to ‘reopen the lunar frontier’. The Florida office, close to the entrance of a US naval base, overlooked the launch pad facilities that took the Apollo missions to the Moon. That was where its ambition lay.

  Next door to Moon Express, another commercially minded company had its sights set off-planet. It belonged to Space X and was their launch and landing control centre. Space X’s Dragon spacecraft had already made multiple return trips delivering cargo to and from the International Space Station for NASA. Naturally, I had requested an interview with Elon Musk, who, after founding the company that became PayPal and selling it for around $180 million to eBay, had gone on to launch the private space company Space X in 2002. Equally naturally, as most journalists have discovered, he turned that bid down. I spotted a Cadillac in the car park with the registration NO1 KING above the Space X company logo. Could that belong to him? Probably. It wasn’t a Tesla, though, which is the electric car another of his startup companies produced. Who knows? It could have been anyone who worked there because, in order to succeed, commercial space companies were not modest in advertising their ambitions.

  We set up by a picnic table in a secluded grassy area behind the Moon Express building and beneath some trees for shade. This way we could see the Cape Canaveral launch pads in the distance and hear the buzz of air traffic in the background, to give the interview a sense of location. A few miles away, at Moon Express’s new campus at Launch Complex 17 and 18, they were building robotic lunar landers. I could not secure access to those as I was a foreign national. Wally, as a US citizen, was free to visit, but she would not reveal her social security number to NASA or Moon Express. I tried to persuade Wally to take this opportunity and at least see the rovers for herself, even if I couldn’t. ‘You must never give anyone your social security number ever,’ Wally told me firmly. ‘It’s not safe. I’ve seen it on TV.’

  While I unpacked the recording equipment, the PR woman, Julie, kept tabs on Wally’s movements. ‘I’m very curious,’ Wally yelled as she headed off, ‘and I want to know what these buildings are.’

  When Wally returned, she asked for Julie’s phone number. The local area code was a reminder that we were among the world of space and rocket launches. It was three, two, one.

  Dr Robert (Bob) Richards had an impressive academic background within space science from several institutions, which included being special assistant to Carl Sagan – the inspirational astronomer, writer and science populariser at Cornell University. Born in Canada, Richards had co-founded the International Space University and Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. In 2008, while director of Optech’s Space Division, the company’s technology inside instruments on-board NASA’s Phoenix lander discovered falling snow on Mars.

  Richards is a visionary. A visionary who knows his space history. ‘I am so honoured,’ he exclaimed on meeting Wally, hurrying towards her. He gave Wally an enormous hug and declared excitedly, ‘I should be interviewing you.’

  ‘Well, I feel honoured to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Bob responded. ‘I’ll tell you that.’

  Wally offered her business card. ‘You don’t ever get to Dallas, do you? To Forth Worth?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Okay, well, you’ve got my card. I’m right there at DFW.’ Locations for Wally were almost invariably defined by their airport letter codes.

  ‘I’ll have to remember that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’ll go dancing.’

  I wasn’t sure where this conversation was headed. Neither, it seemed, was Wally.

  ‘Oh, well no,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I want to know more about space and what you’re doing.’

  Both of them laughed. Wally, a little nervously.

  ‘Okay,’ said Bob and then, keeping a straight face, added: ‘Coffee and then dancing.’

  It was an unusual start to an interview. But both were enjoying each other’s company. She read her introduction, and while the emphasis was still not exactly how I’d have preferred, both the link and her interview were the most relaxed I’d heard her do.

  ‘We are a company that’s concentrating on building spacecraft,’ explained Richards, ‘basically robots that can fly through space and land on other worlds, including the Moon. Not launching, we’re hitching a ride to go into space.’

  Once separated from the launcher, the robotic spacecraft would then light its own rockets for the rest of the journey. Wally was transfixed.

  ‘That is absolutely mindboggling because I’m not around this information, so thank you for that.’

  Okay, so it wasn’t the usual reporter response either, but she was doing great.

  ‘I want to be interviewing you,’ he replied.

  Richards was a charismatic speaker. He had a vision and was generous in referencing others with a similar outlook: Space X, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. The
new era of entrepreneurs brought ‘democratised access to space’.

  As a boy in Toronto, Richards visited the Space Coast and the Kennedy Space Center for family holidays. ‘I was a child of Apollo. I grew up watching people walk on the Moon, turning channels on the TV and seeing Captain Kirk rocket through the galaxy on the Starship Enterprise, going to the movie theatre and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and what it must be like meeting an intelligence so much vaster than ours that they appear godlike. This was my boyhood. I believed in that dream. But in 1972, with the cancellation of the Apollo programme, I became an orphan of Apollo. Me and an entire generation. So what we’re seeing now is that generation of believers doing it for themselves.’

  He described where we were standing, overlooking the Cape Canaveral launch pads, as ‘hallowed ground’ and saw this historic location as the new future for space and business. ‘We will go to space to stay and to move the economic sphere of Earth outwards so we can live on the Moon and go to Mars,’ he declared, ‘and the human species will expand as a multi-world species. The miracle today is that small teams of entrepreneurs driven with a vision can do what superpowers could only do before. That’s how technology is accelerating to allow you and I to go into space.’

  Here was a man, alongside Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others, who was working to make his dreams, Wally’s and mine come true. And – let’s not forget – make money along the way. The Moon contains minerals, rare-earth metals, helium-3, water, nickel, gold, silver and platinum group metals. According to Richards, it was a ‘gas station in the sky’, which Richards saw as an opportunity for exploration and exploitation but also as a way to stop plundering the Earth. He wanted to help create a permanent ‘space-faring species’ with Moon Express at the beginning of that era. Richards, like Wally and his fellow space entrepreneurs, had a dream where mankind routinely went into space.

  A few weeks earlier, Elon Musk had announced that he was going to take two unnamed private citizens on a paid trip to the vicinity of the Moon and back in the SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule. No one knew the ticket price, but news reports had speculated that the week-long trip would cost somewhere between $35 million and $90 million.

  So far, most paying customers into space have been male, accurately reflecting the gender divide for the richest people in the world. The first ever space tourist was US millionaire and former NASA engineer Dennis Tito. He signed a deal in 2000 for a reported $20 million to get on-board the Russian space station Mir. But a year later, before his planned mission, the ageing Mir was removed from orbit to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining pieces fell into the South Pacific.

  Fortunately for Tito, a US company called Space Adventures brokered another deal. After eight months of training in Star City, outside Moscow, Tito flew up to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz rocket on 28 April 2001 and spent six days in space. A few years later, in 2004, the Iranian-born American engineer and entrepreneur, Anousheh Ansari, became the first female space tourist.

  After Tito’s flight, from 2001 onwards, commercial space tourism was open for business. There would be some major differences, however, in the experience that these early space tourists had on-board the International Space Station and what would be offered by companies such as Virgin Galactic in a spaceplane. In this case, the time spent in space on a commercial flight would be measured in minutes rather than days. The upside was that tickets were more affordable. More affordable compared with the millions paid by Tito. Wally had paid $200,000 to Virgin Galactic for a taste of space. If she was to buy her ticket today, it would cost an extra $50,000. By comparison to the early space tourists and the effects of inflation, Wally appears to have got herself a bargain.

  Before dinner that night, we rode a free hotel shuttle bus to Cocoa Beach pier. A notice instructed people not to walk through the Pelican Bar & Grill to reach the pier’s drinking area, but somehow, while I took the detour, Wally had quietly navigated the diners and was waiting for me at the last remaining free table. As I took photographs of the sunset, Wally threw discarded potato chips into the air in order to get close up shots of seagulls swooping in to feed. I overheard her chatting to a couple who had enquired about her space-related outfit.

  ‘I’m an astronaut, honey.’

  Had I misheard? Usually she used the phrase ‘astronaut candidate’. On the way back to our room, Wally expressed a sudden desire for chocolate. Out of all the supplies on her email, a bar of chocolate wasn’t one of them. ‘I need chocolate, honey.’

  I drove to a Public’s and, since it was a large supermarket, we split up to find the confectionary aisle. Unfortunately, the couple of decent brands of chocolate she later spotted in my trolley didn’t pass muster. ‘No. I don’t like any of those. I like Hershey’s.’

  Once the Hershey’s was located and in the trolley, she ripped off the packaging and began eating it, prompting a flashback to when my son was a toddler. ‘We’ve not paid for it yet,’ I said primly.

  ‘It’s okay. We’ll pay for it. And we need to get more spinach.’

  Dinner was steak, potatoes and fresh spinach leaves for me, cooked spinach for Wally. ‘I’ve not had steak in ages,’ she enthused. ‘This is delicious. Cooked just the way I like it. Thank you, sweetheart. I don’t bother too much with meals at home. Sometimes I get my food from a soup kitchen.’

  I was shocked and unsure whether this was through frugality or a shortage of funds after retirement, though I suspect it might be because she enjoyed the company.

  During the rest of the week plans changed here and there. One of our space journalists had a stomach bug, but we met Ken Kremer from Universe Today at the Mercury Memorial Space Park in Titusville, on Florida’s coast. This was where locals could gather to watch a launch from one of the NASA launch pads on Merritt Island. We stood beside a monument honouring the Mercury 7 astronauts and those from the later Gemini missions. Another reminder, for Wally, of what could have been.

  Kremer had been recommended via a friend of a NASA volunteer I’d met in Houston. The community of former NASA employees is an enjoyable one to be around, as they are so helpful and keen to share their knowledge, expertise and advice in associated museums or on NASA sites. I’d witnessed this at a NASA Social in Cape Canaveral in December 2014. NASA runs these events for people with a space-related social media following. Sometimes they were to a NASA facility, sometimes to a launch. Either way, they provided behind-the-scenes access to space scientists and astronauts. The launch I went to as part of the NASA Social was important because it was considered a ‘stepping stone to Mars’: the test flight for the new Orion spacecraft on a Delta IV Heavy rocket. Orion was the first NASA spacecraft since Apollo that was built to carry human beings into deep space. The design was similar but larger, with the ability to send four astronauts into Low Earth Orbit or beyond.

  My NASA volunteer contact, Herb Baker, had worked in business and accounting and was a former manager at the Johnson Space Center before his retirement. Through supporting NASA’s Flight Operations Directorate, he had enjoyed access to the Mission Control Center and the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. It was pretty clear that, for him, loving space was inevitable. He had gone to school with the children of the Mercury 7 astronauts, and a love of space ran in the family. His mother Aylene had sewn and repaired the fabric heat shield that saved NASA’s Skylab in 1973. On contacting one of Baker’s friends via Facebook, Jean Wright had suggested a number of potential interviewees. After we’d connected, I later discovered that she had been a seamstress for the Space Shuttle, and had hand-sewn the thermal protection between the spaceplane’s tiles.

  At the Kennedy Space Center, Wally and I met the delightful Hugh Harris, a former radio broadcaster who had been known as the voice of Space Shuttle launch control. The first Space Shuttle launch, in 1981, marked the start of hundreds of human beings eventually going into space. But during the 1960s, Harris had worked in the NASA Johnson Centre press office during the Moon land
ings, and so had witnessed the excitement first-hand – perfect for our programme. However, it turned out NASA had recommended Harris because they would not provide a spokesperson. For the first time in my twenty years of BBC radio programmes, the space agency had been uncharacteristically unhelpful with a straightforward media request. A few months into the Trump presidency, no one at NASA was prepared to discuss a possible return to the Moon.

  This was purely political. It had been almost four months since President Trump’s inauguration, but no one had yet been nominated as the new head of NASA. This left the space agency unwilling to speculate on an unknown future and rudderless in terms of not knowing what its direction would be under a new administration: a continued long-term path towards Mars with the Orion programme, or a shorter-term return to the Moon? Harris had retired, so was free to air his own views. Interestingly, his opinion chimed with the European Space Agency’s planned direction.

  ‘We should be going back to the Moon,’ he said, ‘and make use of it to go out and colonise other worlds. The big advantage to the Moon is learning how to live on a hostile world.’

  Harris had recommended that we drop in to see John Tribe, a former Apollo propulsion engineer. He lived in a stunning lakeside house filled with space memorabilia, vintage clocks and a model train that, in one room, ran above our heads on tracks connected to the walls. Tribe had been the chief engineer for the Boeing-Rockwell Company, but he was born in the UK and began his career with an apprenticeship at the British aviation company De Havilland. He had also worked on Britain’s Blue Streak rocket during the 1950s before he was offered a job at Cape Canaveral, joining the US Atlas rocket programme. He bought a ticket for passage on the HMS Queen Mary and arrived in the United States on 1 February 1961. Tribe went on to work for Project Mercury and sat beside Werner von Braun for some of the Ranger launches. ‘This was in 1962. In 1944 we got hit by a V1 rocket when I lived in Portsmouth.’ He paused to laugh, ‘and here’s one of the founding fathers of the German rocket programme right next to me!’ Apparently, the relationship between the German scientists and the few British-born engineers was extremely cordial. ‘We would kid each other about the war.’