Why Katy Perry is the perfect person to go to space with Jeff Bezos on Monday
Is this really happening? Yes, yes it is.
Breaking news! Katy Perry is going to space on Monday… Isn’t this weird? No, actually. It makes perfect sense.
The California Gurls singer, 40, will be the first pop star in space. Perhaps having manifested this 11-minute journey in her hit song Firework, the US star will be part of the first all-female crew since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963. That’s big news.
It will be the 11th trip taken by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, also hosting Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and journalist Lauren Sanchez, who is also married to Bezos.
Promotional material for the flight claims that Perry ‘hopes her journey encourages her daughter and others to reach for the stars, literally and figuratively’.
While the message is a surface-level positive one, just like Perry’s recent hit Woman’s World, it’s full of gaping holes.
Women in STEM and astronauts are thankfulEver since men were made fighter pilots and women weren’t, it was written in the stars that space is reserved for men. It’s a bleak place to be for female astronauts – that the last all-woman space mission came when The Beatles were in their prime.
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Previous Page Next Page She’s going to be part of the first all-female crew since the 1960s (Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)Astronaut John Glenn’s reported words – denied by his press officer at the time – about NASA Mercury 12, a group of women pilots trained as astronauts in 1961 but who were never sent to space, say it all.
One of these women, Bernice Steadman, who never got to experience the view so many men had before her, recalled: ‘He called us “90 pounds of recreational equipment”.’
‘We gave him a couple of opportunities to eat his words, and every time he’s just dug himself deeper.’
How dangerous is Katy Perry's space mission?Britain’s leading expert in human spaceflight Libby Jackson OBE tells Metro: ‘Blue Origin flight is not a test flight. They’ve been routinely flying this spacecraft now for quite some time, it’s not going to orbit. It will be an 11 minute flight. There’s no risk of them getting stuck up in space or anything like that.
‘To be clear, there are risks. You are putting yourself on top of a rocket, you’re accelerating yourself, you’re heading 100 miles up. The parachutes have to open. Everything has to happen accordingly so that it returns back to Earth.
‘Blue Origin have tested all of that. They’ve got their regulations. They’ve shown that it’s safe for paying passengers, but it’s still not to be undertaken lightly.
‘They’ve had training. They understand what they’re doing, and they will experience things that I hope will change their view on Earth.’
Blue Origin’s New Shepard has completed 10 human spaceflights so far (Picture: Patrick T. FALLON / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
So for Dr Meganne Christian, Reserve Astronaut and Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, the all-female Blue Origin mission is a ‘net positive’.
Even though she did battle through an 18-month hiring process, beating 22,000 applicants to get the chance to go to space – having worked in the field of science all her life – Dr Meganne does not begrudge celebrities like Katy Perry for chucking some cash at a millionaire and instantly getting this opportunity.
‘As a Reserve Astronaut, there are no guarantees [I will get to go to space], but there are more and more opportunities becoming available, so I’m fairly hopeful,’ she tells Metro.
Perry says she will be glamming up for the flight (Picture: Steve Eichner/WWD via Getty Images) The rocket is launching on Monday at 10am EDT (2pm GMT) in Texas (Picture: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)‘They are two different things,’ she explains. ‘If I did one of these sub-orbital flights, I would find it hard to then call myself an astronaut, because it’s different. It’s space tourism.’
Dr Christian didn’t ever think she could be an astronaut as a child. Only 11% of people in space have been women, so this is no shock. While representation is still a problem, things are changing. In her class of astronauts in the European Space Agency, almost half are women .
‘Would I have liked it to have been in a long duration mission to the International Space Station being a first? Perhaps,’ says Dr Christian.
‘But at the same time, this kind of visibility can only be a good thing for young girls and women to see that kind of representation.’
Visibility is important – but it also reeks of tokenismDr Christian’s point about the space mission not being a (quote on quote) ‘proper’ space mission is a valid one. It is a sub-orbital flight travelling 65 miles. Whereas the International Space Station is 250 miles above Earth in orbit.
‘It’s essentially like kicking a football up into space, and it goes up and it comes down, and over the top of that, you’re floating, and the passengers inside experience the weightlessness but they don’t get all the way to orbit because the rocket isn’t big enough and they’re not going fast enough,’ explains Britain’s leading expert in human spaceflight Libby Jackson OBE, who is also Head of Space at the Science Museum.
