Sue Nelson

At the age of 82, Wally Funk is about to realise her dream, of going into space. She will be one of the passengers on board Jeff Bezos' first commercial suborbital launch. And when I say "realise her dream", I'm not talking metaphorically. Wally Funk is one of the 'Mercury 13', the group of 13 women candidate astronauts who were put through the same rigorous testing regime at the Lovelace Clinic in 1961 as the 'Mercury 7' astronauts, and at the same time. This was a private venture, arranged by Dr. Lovelace and funded by Jacqueline Cochran, herself a record-breaking pilot, to prove that women had as much right to travel into and work in space as men. The programme continued for some years until squashed at a high level.

Wally herself was already an accomplished pilot; she went on to have a distinguished career in flying as a fully qualified jet instructor and later Federal Transportation Bureau crash investigator. It is difficult to imagine anyone more qualified to fly into space.

But this is not a straightforward biography. The book is written by Sue Nelson, who makes documentary radio programmes, manly about women's achievements, for the BBC. The story of Wally Funk is told through the medium of Nelson's own account of first meeting and interviewing Wally for one such programme, and then making further programmes about women in space, with Wally as presenter.

It is a delightful memoir. Wally Funk comes over as loud, immensely curious, eager to find out about everything and everyone, driven to fly and determined to get into space, extremely irritating and ultimately highly lovable. Along the way, a lot of information is slipped into the text about Wally's career and other women in flying and the space business. The author's voice is very much that of a BBC Radio 4 person, so that is quite familiar to me; others may find it strangely flippant or possibly even disrespectful. In truth, it is neither, but that takes a little time to sink in. Ms. Nelson is a feminist, a space nut and a science fiction fan - she cites a series of books by British author Ian Sales which explores various alternate histories of the Apollo programme; in one such, Commander Wally Funk leads the all-female American Moon programme. And Nelson knows her television science fiction well enough to cite 'Stargate SG-1' instead of constantly making 'Star Trek' references.

If you can make the leap to understanding that this is not a simple linear biography, it will fascinate. And you will come away rooting for Wally Funk.… (altro)

Space Non-Fiction with some Science Fiction
Review of the Audible Original audiobook (July 2019)

The Space Race is a 10-part documentary that covers the beginnings of rocketry through to the Cold War race to the moon by the Soviet Union and the USA, the moon landings, the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. It includes voice actors to create various scenes some of which are fictional speculative enactments such as a return to the moon in the future by a descendant of Neil Armstrong and a star ship journey to other star systems. Even with the amount of well documented information already in the public domain there was still a interesting variety of earlier historical events which were completely new to me, such as the story of rocket sled tester John Stapp and of the independently funded physiological research testing of potential female astronauts such as Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk in the Mercury 13 program.

The chapter headings were as follows:
Episode 1 Return to the Moon
Episode 2 Cold War in Space
Episode 3 Space Warriors
Episode 4 Reaching for the Moon
Episode 5 Tragedy to Triumph
Episode 6 For All Mankind
Episode 7 United in Space
Episode 8 Space Shuttle
Episode 9 Home in Space
Episode 10 Infinity and Beyond

The narration by Kate Mulgrew and the performances by the audio actors were all excellent.

The Space Race was originally released in July 2019. It was one of eleven free Audible Originals available to members in July 2020. It is available to everyone for a standard price.… (altro)