Floating in the isolation tank, Wally Funk felt weightless.
She couldn’t see or hear. There was nothing to taste or smell. When she patted the eight feet of water surrounding her, she didn’t feel it.
By the time Funk endured those circumstances for 10 hours and 35 minutes in 1961, she had already taken at least 87 other exams, ranging from swallowing three feet of rubber hose to guzzling a pint of radioactive water. It was all in service of becoming one of the first female astronauts at a time when American women still needed their husbands’ permission to sign a mortgage and get a credit card.