TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of rape and sexual assault.
Blue Origin and New Shepard Program:
Blue Origin is a space company owned by Jeff Bezos, who is most famously known for being the founder of Amazon. The New Shepard Program is a series of missions that complete sub-orbital flights with a reusable booster; sub-orbital space flight means that the trajectory crosses The Kármán line, but lands before completing a full orbit of Earth. The Kármán line is set 62 miles above Earth’s sea level and is widely accepted as the end of Earth’s atmosphere and the start of space.
Meet the Passengers:
Scientists:
Amanda Nguyen is a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a Vietnamese-American bioastronautics researcher, and a social justice advocate. Nguyen was studying bioastronautics at Harvard but abruptly shifted to social justice work to fight for resources and legal protections for survivors of sexual assault following being raped herself. Consequently, she put her astronaut dreams on hold to pursue policy reform at the federal level and later at the United Nations. She drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, which she was able to get unanimously passed through Congress. Through her organization “Rise,” she has been able to get over 83 laws protecting sexual assault survivors passed.
In addition to her social justice work, Nguyen has researched various exoplanets and even aided NASA with the final Shuttle Mission. During her time in space aboard this mission, she conducted research on menstruation in zero gravity – to refute the historic claim that women could not go to space due to menstruation – along with work on wound dressings, wearable ultrasound patches, and some collaboration with the Vietnamese National Space Center.
The other scientist aboard the mission was Aisha Bowe. She is an aerospace engineer who studied at the University of Michigan before working at NASA. Bowe is also an entrepreneur, and she has founded the companies STEMBoard and LINGO. STEMBoard focuses on empowering government agencies to take action against social issues, and LINGO supports students in accessing STEM education. In space, Bowe conducted research on plant growth in microgravity in hopes of finding better crops to grow in space and increasing the productivity and efficiency of farms here on Earth.
Space Tourists:
Katy Perry is a music pop star known for her hits, “Dark Horse,” “The One that Got Away” and “Never Really Over.” While the others asked her to sing while in zero gravity, she refused, but on the return journey, she sang Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Her zero gravity indicator was a daisy-shaped paper containing the setlist for her upcoming “Lifetimes” tour. The daisy was a nod to her 2020 song “Daisies,” which focuses on themes of resilience and overcoming obstacles. Upon exiting the spacecraft, she made a dramatic show of kissing the ground and discussed how the 11-minute flight was life-changing.
Gayle King is a CBS News Host most known for co-hosting CBS Mornings. She is also an editor-at-large for “Oprah Daily” and the host of Sirius XM radio’s “Gayle King in the House.” She explained on Variety that she was a doubter of the cost-benefit ratio of space tourism before getting involved in it herself, but now believes “every time a flight goes up, they get some type of information that can be used for something else.”
Kerianne Flynn is most well known for her work in film producing, having worked on “The Automatic Hate,” “This Changes Everything,” and “Lily.”
Lauren Sanchez is Jeff Bezos’ fiancée. She won an Emmy in Journalism in 1999 and is also a pilot and philanthropist. While many on social media have argued that she is the most controversial member of this flight, since she is the founder’s fiancee, news sources have neglected to cover this aspect of her life.
Media Perception:
While this mission has received praise for being an all-female crew, this does come with some drawbacks. The media seems to have centered around Katy Perry, but by highlighting Perry, news outlets have potentially undermined the significance of Nyugen and Bowe’s work and brushed over the potentially wasteful and negative effects of this mission in general.
Others have taken to social media with conspiracy theories claiming the whole flight was fake. They cite evidence from the way that the hatch opened upon landing to the lack of burn marks on the capsule that they would have been expecting from it reentering the atmosphere. While such conspiracy theories are prolific, so are the articles debunking them.
Conclusion:
Overall, the flight did conduct some important scientific research conducted by Nyugen and Bowe, but these accomplishments have been overshadowed in the media by those who came along as space tourists. This mission brings up important questions about the role of spaceflight and what it takes to be an astronaut.
