Gayle King Is Upset People Are Calling Blue Origin Space Flight A “Ride,” Compares Trip To Alan Shepard In 1961

Casey Young·
CULTURE
·
Gayle King culture
@blueorigin

Gayle, honey… read the room.

On Monday, six women took a Blue Origin rocket into outer space for an 11-minute space flight, which included Gayle King, Katy Perry, Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, Lauren Sánchez and Kerianne Flynn. Katy Perry has been making a lot of headlines leading up to the trip, and all of them seemed excited about this wild adventure… well, everyone except for CBS News co-host, the aforementioned Gayle King.

Honestly, saying they actually went into outer space is kind of a stretch because Blue Origin takes passengers to the Kármán line, the 62-mile (100 km) altitude which is a relatively arbitrary line that is regarded as the “boundary of space.” However, Blue Origin’s New Shepard are not ships that orbit Earth like the traditional NASA rocket launches we see.

And just for reference, the international Space Station orbits at around 250 miles from the Earth’s surface.

At 9:30 am, the rocket took off and the flight was a complete success, but as someone who also hates (probably not even a strong enough word) to fly, I sympathize with Gayle King and how nervous she was to go through with the trip… the woman did not look well beforehand and she became a viral meme:

Before they left, Lauren, the fiancée of billionaire Amazon and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos, said much of the trip was aimed at making space-wear (I guess that’s what I’m calling it?), more suitable to women and their fashion preferences… seems really unnecessary to me, but whatever. They have the money, so knock yourself out, I guess.

But the group of women have received a lot of criticism online, and by other celebrities even, for the gluttonous nature of the whole thing and the fact that there genuinely was no point in this other than getting press… they didn’t explore, or actually do anything while in space… they were up there for less than ten minutes. One of richest men in the world let his fiancée and her famous friends ride in a space shop… not exactly a groundbreaking feat here. Again, it’s their money and company, do whatever you want, but something about it does feel kind of dystopian. I’ve seen tons of people comparing it to The Hunger Games:

But King and Sánchez have both fired back at critics, telling People that there’s just something us “normal” people don’t get about it… and Gayle is continuing her press tour, and is seemingly growing more annoyed by the day at people’s reactions to the whole nature of the “ride,” though she doesn’t want people calling it that.

Gayle spoke with Entertainment Tonight earlier, and said she’s bothered by the online hate, even coming from her own “friends,” saying them going to space doesn’t take anything away from what’s happening here on earth, and Blue Origin has good intentions in their space exploration and what they ultimately hope to accomplish with this whole project:

“This is what bothers me, because I’ve certainly read some of the things online, coming from people that I know, that I like, that I consider friends. And this is what I would say to that: space is not an either or, it’s a both and. And because you do something in space, doesn’t mean you’re taking anything away from Earth. And what you’re doing in space is trying to make things better here on Earth.

What Blue Origin wants to do is take the waste here and figure out a way to put it in space to make our planet cleaner. I mean, Jeff Bezos has so many ideas and the people that are working there are really devoted and dedicated to making our planet a better place, that’s number one.”

But the part where she talks about being upset over people calling it a “ride,” and even comparing what they did this week to Alan Shepard’s astronaut journey, was laughable. Shepard became the second person and the first American to travel into space in 1961, and, in 1971, he became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the moon, at age 47… to think you can compare yourself to an actual astronaut is ludicrous and only highlights what people find so over-the-top about this event.

The rocket was controlled completely remotely from the command center, and the women didn’t really hvve to do anything in terms of getting themselves up and back down safely… not to take away from them agreeing to do it, I don’t think I could ever do it myself, but it was simply a ride, sorry Gayle.

Also, I think it’s safe to assume that, no, Gayle, most people haven’t been, and you’re only digging yourself into a deeper hole, so to speak, but making comments like this:

“Number two, have you been? Have you been? If you’ve been, and you still feel that way after you come back, please let’s have a conversation. Number three, please don’t call it a ride. That is not a freakin’ ride. Whenever a man goes up, you have never said to an astronaut, ‘Boy, what a ride.’

But you know we duplicated the same trajectory that Alan Shepard did back in the day, pretty much, no one called that a ride. It was called a flight. It was called a journey, because of ride a ride implies that it’s something frivolous or something that’s lighthearted. There was nothing frivolous about what we did, and the machine that we were on, and what it took for the people to get that machine up and running, to get us up and get us back down safely. So you know, I’m very disappointed, and very saddened by it.

And I also say this… what it’s doing to inspire other women and young girls, please don’t ignore that. I’ve had so many women and young girls reach out to me, and men too by the way, that say, ‘Wow, I never thought I could do that, but I see you doing at this stage of my life.’ Who would’ve thunk it? Not me, and how inspired they are.”

The part about inspiring young girls and women to get into this type of work and follow their passions is great, and there have been plenty of women in space, who are actual astronauts, and put in tons of work to get there… they didn’t just hop on a rocket for ten minutes in full glam to get press. Katy Perry announced shows from up there…

And here I thought Gayle was just happy to be back on earth and would never want to talk about the trauma of all of this again… seems like she’s more passionate about space exploration now more than ever. There’s just something so patronizing about the way she’s talking about and handling the criticism, and I think it’s important for all of these women to realize people have a lot bigger problems that exist right here on planet earth every day, and they don’t really care about this ten minute ride to space.

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