There were a few extra stars briefly in space Monday morning as a celebrity all-female entourage blasted off for a quick trip outside the atmosphere aboard a Blue Origin rocket. The six women, including pop star Katy Perry, news anchor Lauren Sanchez (also fiancé of Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos) TV host Gayle King, along with civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerrianne Flynn, all guests of Sanchez, launched about 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Nope. I just think this is a stunt … like so many other similar ones and little more. THIS one, however, was by some wealthy women with nothing better to spend their money on. These people aren’t astronauts … they were passengers. Besides … I’m retired military. I don’t take prisoners. I let the big man take care of that for me.
Six women. One rocket. They didn’t fix satellites or plant flags but they didn’t need to. This was about showing who else belongs in space. Call ’em Space Voyagers.
Lauren Sánchez – pilot, journalist, mission boss. Total Beyoncé energy.
Katy Perry – pop icon trading fireworks for rocket fuel.
Gayle King – news legend who hates flying… and still went to space.
Aisha Bowe – ex-NASA rocket scientist. Knows the buttons.
Amanda Nguyen – civil rights champ, Nobel nominee, space traveler.
Kerianne Flynn – filmmaker keeping it epic.
They flew, they floated, they landed, making space look good and history a little brighter. Congratulations!!
I am thankful that they came back in one piece. Had they not, we’d be seeing funeral coverage, “reached out to touch the Hand of God” stuff, and Jeff Bezos’ new girlfriend!
Nothing new here - American females beat American males into space on another 100% automated “flight”, way back in 1959. See NASA Bioflight #2. One of the passengers remained a celebrity way longer than any of these women (I’ve never heard of) will. We met her in Huntsville in the late 70s, 20 years after her fateful flight into space.
When no less than the New York Times referred to this as “One Giant Stunt for Womankind”, if got harder to pretend that this was a victory for gender equality or, for that matter, anything other than the marketing department of Blue Origin.
It sounds like they got a free ride courtesy of Bezos. They are not astronauts. They were passengers on a suborbital rocket. There was no great accomplishment for women. You could have strapped six monkeys in there and it would have had the same relevance to anything.
Actually, I think Bezos (whom I loathe) did something smart here in terms of marketing. Everyone knows that most of the pax/occupants are a lot like normal people (except they are also celebrities). This could make it seem more accessible to “normal” very wealthy people, many of whom idolize one or more of the participants. Diabolically brilliant.
It was more or less the same as an all-woman roller coaster. Not that it wasn’t fun, I would ride on it too for free, but I wouldn’t claim to be an astronaut, it would be like claiming to be a supersonic pilot for sitting in seat 12B of a Concorde.
They didn’t even have ground controllers … this thing was autonomous … just like rides at Disneyland.