“I’ve thought, ‘Am I good enough to do this? Am I better than the guys?’” says Wolfe, who studied chemical engineering at the University of Alabama before joining the Air Force ROTC and learning to fly. But the more she practiced, the more confident she became, even if it meant working out her nerves in a $78 million piece of heavy-duty machinery that is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 1.6 (about 433 mph faster than the speed of sound). “Airplanes don’t care if you’re female or male,” she says. “It’s about how well you can fly with the stick and throttle.”