Wally Funk boarded Blue Origin’s New Shepard with business tycoon Jeff Bezos on Tuesday. Trained to be an astronaut 60 years ago, 82 -year-old Wally said on a Blue Origin’s livestream that she would take her camera up in the New Shepard rocket ship and click a postcard-perfect photograph of herself with the American flag in her hand and the earth behind her. 

Funk further emphasised that young children should get their parents to give them a flight to see if they like it. She said, “If they want to continue, ‘something’s going to be in your heart that’s going to want you to do that.'”

Jeff Bezos had earlier shared a video throwing it back to when he broke the news to her about the flight and asked what her reaction would be when she landed. 

The 82-year-old smiled and jumped to hug him, saying, “I would say, ‘Honey, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me!'”

Wally Funk was one of the 13 women who went through testing for the Woman in Space Program in 1961. The program was later shut down during the Cold War and no woman was sent to space until 1983 when Sally K Ride was sent on Mission STS-7, becoming the first woman to travel to space.  “I was young and I was happy. I just believed it would come,” she told The New York Times. “If not today, then in a couple of months.”

Although the program could not continue long enough for her to realise her dream, she has now come full circle, becoming the oldest person to go into space as she rocketed today along with Jeff Bezos and two others. If not everyone else, the three along with her were lucky enough to witness her joy of finally fulfilling her dream.