The Inspiration of Katy Perry’s Trip to Space (Opinion)
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Monday morning (04/14/2025) at 9:30 AM (EST) Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifted off its pad in the West Texas desert, carrying 6 people to space. The 6 aboard were Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sanchez, Kerianne Flynn, Aisha Bowe, and Amanda Nguyen. Following stage separation, the crew capsule carried the 6 women to an apogee of 106km before heading back down to Earth. The entire flight lasted around 11 minutes. Both the booster, and the crew capsule landed safely.
Following the trip each member was interviewed and gave their thoughts on the experience. Most expressed feelings of joy, excitement, wonder, and a sense of connectedness with each other. Many commented on the beauty of seeing Earth from that perspective, and the surreal feeling of microgravity. Many said that flying to space had been a dream of theirs, others said it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. It was a nice moment, hearing about the raw emotions from the experience of getting to do something that, until recently, seemed completely impossible.
The Crew of NS-31. From left to right: Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Lauren Sanchez, Amanda Nguyen, Katy Perry, and Kerianne Flynn. Photo Credit: Blue Origin.
Following this however, I made the mistake of getting on social media, almost immediately, the hatred started. The vitriol I saw directed at these women, and to a lesser extent Blue Origin, was disheartening at the least, and downright angering at the worst. I’d like to take some time to address some of the points made by critics of this flight, so strap in.
The first, and most glaringly obvious comment was “the didn’t really go to space” or people snidely putting quotation marks around the word “space” in their comments. Let’s get one thing clear off the bat, these 6 women absolutely were in space. The Karman Line, the internationally recognized as the boundary for outer space sits at 100 km above the Earth’s surface. As we established earlier the apogee of the capsule’s flight was 106 km, which is above the Karman line, and therefore the capsule did in fact reach space.
I have also seen a lot of people arguing that “this isn’t actually inspirational” and “this isn’t inspiring anyone” which I starkly disagree with. Until around a decade ago the only people who could fly to space were employees of government agencies (NASA, Roscosmos, etc), however now that is slowly beginning to change. I think it is absolutely inspirational for young children, who may dream of flying to space, to know that an avenue exists where they don’t necessarily have to be a former military pilot, or someone with multiple degrees in engineering, physics, or other science fields to achieve the dream of flying to space. Now some will argue “but you’ll never be able to afford to do it anyway it’s only for billionaires”, and to that I would say, give it time. As this happens more, the costs will begin to fall. This leads me into my next point:
One of the two biggest complaints I see online, actually go together, money/environment, we’re going to tackle money first, and I’m going to try and do these without getting super political so bear with me. Chief among the complaints is “They shouldn’t be spending their money on joy rides when there is so much wrong with the world”, lots of comments about wasted resources, and being tone deaf. Here’s a few things to remember, first and foremost, this was a private spaceflight, there was no taxpayer dollars involved, important, since not everyone knows that. Second, this is the money of private individuals, they can spend it however, and on whatever they want. A lot of people will somehow try and debate this, but it really is that simple. Now, if you want to discuss tax rates, fine, but that isn’t what this article is about, and its frankly not super relevant to the discussion. As for the world’s problems, yes, there are tragedies happening across the world, hunger, corruption, lack of rights for women and minorities, homelessness, war. All these issues are things that absolutely need to be addressed but tying those issues back to a few people flying on a rocket is disingenuous. The money Katy Perry paid for her flight is not fixing any of these issues, and indeed money alone isn’t fixing them either. These issues involve many social, cultural, and economic factors, and more often that not throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix the problem, you need to fix the root causes first. The last thing I will say, because I saw it stated a lot focused strictly on American politics. I saw many comments about “taking a tone-deaf vanity trip while we fall into dictatorship”. All I’m going to say here is not everyone views things the same way you do.
Next, we cover the environment comments, this is another popular one. “Vanity joy rides throwing a lot of pollution in the air” or “huge carbon footprint for a joy ride, while the world burns” things like that. Let’s start again with the easy stuff, New Shepard is powered by Hydrogen and Oxygen. The main by-product of this fuel is water vapor, and no carbon emissions at all are produced. New Shepard, even by rocket industry standards is considered one of the cleaner rockets. The rocket industry has always taken a lot of flak for being bad for the environment, but in all reality its impact is negligible. Compared with other sectors like auto travel, airline travel, and manufacturing rockets are a tiny blip on a chart. Of course, the impact of Monday’s flight was not zero, but to use the logic of the critics “why focus on the rockets when there are so many bigger issues”. Climate Change is absolutely something that needs addressed, but stopping New Shepard flights would be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, etc, far bigger fish to fry. And in the spaceflight industry as a whole, I argue the benefits of what we learn far outweigh the negatives of the emissions.
New Shepard on the pad, prior to the liftoff of NS-31.
Photo Credit: Blue Origin.
Next talking point that I want to touch on is the whole “Women in Space” thing, as I’ve seen a lot of people ragging on it. I, as a man, am going to be kind of careful about how I say this. Do I think it is a touch silly that this is being hailed as a huge feminist advancement? Sure, but that’s how PR works, happens all the time for things like movies, games, or positions of power. The first woman to do this, or the first person from (X) country to do that, that’s how the world seems to work right now. I’m a big fan of American football, a few years ago there was a really big deal made about the first time 2 black quarterbacks had played in a Superbowl. My point in saying all that is, even if you disagree with it, the PR campaign should come as no surprise. Now, I do not say any of that as a knock on diversity, I think its great that more opportunities are being opened up for women and minorities, progress for all is important. What has really been interesting for me to see, especially as a man, is that 98% of people I've seen dragging and criticizing this flight have been women, and a lot of them are criticizing it as “marginalizing real female astronauts”. Now perhaps most interestingly, the number of people who are able name off a few of said female astronauts when asked is disappointingly small. There are absolutely some incredible female astronauts, and the stories of people like Sally Ride, Peggy Whitson, Tracy Dyson, Suni Williams, Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya, and others absolutely deserve to be heard and appreciated. What I don’t understand however is why people seem incapable of celebrating them without using them as cudgels to tear down the women who flew yesterday. If you want to take issue with calling them astronauts, then fine, but it is possible to have that conversation, without hurling insults. Sure, Katy Perry wasn’t performing EVAs on her trip, but I would argue it still does take some courage to strap yourself into a bundle of explosives and fire yourself into space, even if just for a brief time.
The final comments I see often and want to address is that this flight was “useless”, “no progress was made”, or “they didn’t do anything, so this flight was a meaningless waste”. All of these comments are demonstrably false. First of all, there were 3 legit science experiments on board the flight Monday, concerning plant biology and human physiology. Aside from that, the progress here is being made by Blue Origin. The more they fly, the better they are able to perfect their technology. Over time, their technology will get better, they may add more vehicles, and their launch cadence will increase, all of these factors will eventually reduce the cost of launch, and therefore, the cost of a ticket. This is in direct opposition to the “its only a joy ride for billionaires” comments. Those comments are rather short sighted, and I will give you an example. When the commercial airline industry was first coming online, it was only available to the very wealthy. Over time, more planes were built, larger planes were built, technology was improved and mass produced, and better routes were established. Now I can hop on a plane from Pennsylvania to Florida for like 50 bucks. That’s how progress works, and it may not happen in my lifetime, as someone on the internet very loudly pointed out to me, but that shouldn’t matter. If we only push for progress that is short term, practically nothing would ever get done, as I said, short sighted indeed.
I am excited at the prospect of more people flying to space, and though I may never see it, or be able to fly to space myself the prospect is exciting, nonetheless. There are always going to be critics, I understand not everyone is interested in space flight, and not everyone feels it is important. However, to see the problems of the word used as a weapon against space flight grinds my gears because these arguments are not based in reality. It may pain some people to hear this, but the world will never be perfect, there will always be problems on Earth. We should of course work to address these problems but using them as a reason to halt progress is ignorant at best and dangerous at worst.
The views expressed above are the opinion of the Author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Weekly Spaceman or any of its other employees.
As always feel free to write to me at rickyew2112@gmail.com, or find me on X @Rickyew2112
Sic Itur Ad Astra
(Thus They Journey to the Stars)