Katy Perry: multi-hyphenate, award-winning singer and performer.
Now, astronaut?
Perry is among six women who will board the next mission of Blue Origin’s New Shepard, a rocket owned by an aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos. The rest of the crew include Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Gayle King, Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sanchez.
When I first heard that Katy Perry was going to space, I rolled my eyes a bit.
It seems like such a typical venture for the ultra-rich. They fade in relevance a bit on planet Earth, so next stop — book a ticket for an experience that no ordinary person could ever dream to achieve.
First of all, Blue Origin doesn’t even advertise the cost of its tickets. Its first ticket went on auction for $28 million and allowed Dutch teenager Oliver Daeman, son of a millionaire private equity manager, to fly past the internationally recognized space boundary, the Karman line, and return Earthside in a jaunty 11 minutes.
Reports from 2018 suggest that a minimum price for a voyage on New Shepard could be around $200,000.
On the other hand, it is, in a strange way, more accessible than ordinary space travel. There aren’t any pilots on Blue Origin’s fully automated flight, which means that you don’t have to go through the years of rigorous training to become an actual astronaut.
Right now, the ventures still feel unattainable — and a little tone-deaf — as if we all really need to see a selfie from space by another celebrity who tosses thousands around like it’s loose change.
But Blue Origin claims their end goal is to make space travel cheaper and more sustainable.
Do I believe that will actually happen from a company helmed by the same guy who founded Amazon? Maybe the cheaper part.
I’ve been hearing a lot of news about space tourism lately, from SpaceX to Blue Origin to Virgin Galactic. I feel two ways about it.
On the one hand, it’s extremely innovative. I don’t think that 50 years ago we could have imagined going to space simply for recreation, and as more and more space tourism companies pop up, hopefully it continues to drive down prices, increase advancements in aeronautics and make these ventures more possible for the everyman.
The ease of these flights means that we can break boundaries a lot quicker. The flight Katy Perry will be on, NS-31, will be the first all-female crew in space since 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during her solo-flight.
The first American woman in space, Sally Ride, was in 1983, which is still remarkably recent.
Furthermore, Amanda Nguyen, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and 2022 TIME Women of the Year, will be the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian women in space.
On the other hand, it’s hard to see these experiments as anything other than the rich flaunting their wealth. Especially as our planet continues to burn and suffer, watching famous celebrities joyriding around space for pure leisure reminds us of the startling divide between us and them.
The consequences of climate change, international warfare and increasingly hostile political environments don’t even make a dent in the lifestyles of these people who can simply leave Earth when it conveniences them.
After all, if everything goes downhill on Earth, it’s not you and me who are getting those seats on the rocketship to Jupiter, to Saturn or to another planet that we’ve contorted into a livable habitat for humanity. It’s the Katy Perrys and the Jeff Bezoses who can afford it.
I hope that NS-31 goes well because it does represent a leap in inclusion in the aeronautics field, but I also hope that space tourism doesn’t become just another gauche celebrity trend that fades into obscurity in a few years after wasting our collective time and resources.
