Sorry Katy, not an astronaut.
On Monday, six women took a Blue Origin rocket into outer space for an 11-minute flight, which included Gayle King, Katy Perry, Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, Lauren Sánchez and Kerianne Flynn.
Welcome to West Texas, NS-31 crew! pic.twitter.com/8dFPqiaiZW
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 13, 2025
The ride has received a lot of criticism for basically being a publicity stunt after Perry and King kissed the ground after returning from the 11-minute journey. And 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 or SpaceX rocket launches we see.
The rocket was controlled completely remotely from the command center, and the women didn’t really have to do anything in terms of getting themselves up and back down safely.
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, more suitable to women and their fashion preferences, which doesn’t really seem like it should be a big priority but what do I know.
✨ Weightless and limitless. pic.twitter.com/GQgHd0aw7i
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 14, 2025
But the group of women have received a lot of criticism online, including from other celebrities, for the frivolous nature of the whole endeavor and the fact that there was genuinely no point in this other than getting press.
Model Emily Ratajkowski took to social media after the mission, calling it “disgusting” and “beyond parody.”
“That space mission this morning? That’s end time sh*t. Like, this is beyond parody.
That you care about Mother Earth and it’s about Mother Earth, and you’re going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that’s single-handedly destroying the planet?
Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space. For what? For what? What was the marketing there? And to try and make it like…I’m disgusted. Literally, I’m disgusted.”
But King has pushed back on the criticism, even ridiculously going as far as to compare the women to Alan Shepard, the first American to travel into space in 1961, and the fifth and oldest person to walk on the moon:
“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.”
Of course there was one difference between the two missions: Alan Shepard was actually an astronaut.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took to X this evening to clarify that the passengers on Blue Origin don’t meet the FAA definition of “astronaut.”
“The U.S. commercial space industry is an inspiring project which showcases American ingenuity and exceptionalism. But the last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”
The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.”
The U.S. commercial space industry is an inspiring project which showcases American ingenuity and exceptionalism. But the last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have “demonstrated activities during… https://t.co/n2DxpNh4Hy
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) April 17, 2025
Sorry Gayle, I guess there’s a slight difference between you and Alan Shepard after all.
