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Jeff Bezos in front of his space station in Texas: Wally Funk is also supposed to launch into space from here
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MARK RALSTON / AFP
The 82-year-old US pilot Wally Funk will accompany Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on his flight into space in two and a half weeks - and thus travel into space as the oldest person in history.
Funk will take part in the first manned flight of Bezos' space project Blue Origin into space on July 20 as a guest of honor, the company announced.
The pilot had already participated in an astronaut program as a young woman, but had never flown into space.
"I can hardly wait," said Funk laughing in a video that Bezos published on the online service Instagram.
When asked by the richest person in the world what she will say after returning to earth, the 82-year-old replies: "I'll say: honey, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me."
The first manned test flight of the "New Shepard" rocket, for which Blue Origin does a lot of advertising, should only last a good ten minutes. After launch, the spaceship will accelerate to more than 3,700 kilometers per hour within two minutes. Weightlessness should start after three minutes, before the capsule reaches a height of more than 100 kilometers above earth. Then it will re-enter the earth's atmosphere and land, braked by large parachutes, in the Texan desert.
Funk had participated in the privately funded Women in Space program in the 1960s, in which female pilots were tested for their fitness as astronauts.
The women later known as "Mercury 13" went through the same tests as the astronauts on the NASA Mercury mission, but never flew into space.
Funk was the youngest graduate of the program.
"They told me I did better and got the job done faster than any of the boys," Funk said on the Blue Origin video.
She kept reporting to NASA, but was never accepted as an astronaut.
Almost 20,000 flight hours and more than 3000 instructed flight students
Funk still had a successful aviation career: She became the first woman to be an inspector for the US FAA and the first female investigator for the NTSB.
As a pilot, she says she has 19,600 flight hours and has given more than 3000 flight lessons.
Funk will now fly into space on July 20, together with Bezos, his brother Mark and a fourth passenger, who paid $ 28 million (23 million euros) in an online auction.
A reusable rocket will bring the "New Shepard" passenger capsule to an altitude of around 100 kilometers on the Kármán Line, which marks the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and space.
There the crew can experience weightlessness for four minutes and observe the curvature of the earth from space.
The rocket and passenger capsule return to Earth separately, the capsule is ultimately slowed down by three parachutes and lands in the Texas desert.
lmd / dpa / AFP