Monday’s Blue Origin all-female space flight has seemingly accomplished the impossible. In a world where everything from life-saving medical advances to Disney’s programming slate has been the victim of a massively divided nation, very fine people on both sides have made an effort to chide the high-profile jaunt, including US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.
The privately owned Blue Origin NS-31 self-flying rocket counted broadcast journalist Gayle King, singer Katy Perry, and Lauren Sánchez (engaged to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos) in its seats, as well as STEM advocate and entrepreneur Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyễn, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Sánchez, who with her fiancée proudly alongside a passel of tech billionaires such Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as Donald Trump was sworn in as president earlier this year, “led the organization of the historic mission,” Elle reports, and “chose each of the women because of their proven ability to inspire others.”
Sánchez’s proximity to power wasn’t enough to keep folks like Olivia Munn from raising questions about the flight. Arguably one of the earliest public critics of the trip, during an April 3 appearance on NBC’s Today With Jenna and Friends, the actor said, “I know this probably isn’t the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now. What are you guys gonna do up in space? What are you doing up there?”
“What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous…Space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind. What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?”
After the 11-minute flight, criticism grew louder, with Emily Ratajkowski saying via TikTok that the flight is “end-time shit. Like, this is beyond parody.”
“Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space. For what? What was the marketing there?”
Olivia Wilde was just as biting, if more succinct, sharing a photo of Katy Perry kissing the ground upon the flight’s landing to Instagram Stories, with the caption “Billion dollars bought some good memes, I guess.”
The backlash has been enough that King fired back at critics this week, saying, “I know there are cranky Yankees. I know there are some haters. I’m not going to let people steal my joy.”
“I still have a hard time calling myself an astronaut, but two of the astronauts on board—[Aisha Bowe] is a rocket scientist, [Amanda Nguyen] is an astrophysicist-activist—were actually doing experiments. Every time one of those goes up, you get some information that can be used for something else, so I wish people would do more due diligence.”
According to US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, King’s “hard time” is warranted. Via X (formerly Twitter), the former Republican congressman and star of the Boston-set sixth season of The Real World said that Blue Origin’s use of “astronaut crew” to describe the flight’s passengers (as it did here) is incorrect.
Echoing Munn’s critique, Duffy tweeted that “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.’”
Duffy concluded with a subtle dig that suggests that those questioning the flight might not be the only ones who need to employ some of King’s “due diligence.” “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,” Duffy said. “They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.”
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