Ray Bradbury, the great science fiction author, had this to say about space exploration: ‘Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.’ I’d hazard a guess that Bradbury might want to think again if he’d lived to witness what must surely go down in history – if at all – as the most self-indulgent and pointless trip into space. Ever.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-31 mission has attracted huge attention because it featured an all-female crew, including Lauren Sanchez (the soon-to-be wife of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos). The others on board were pop star Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, film-maker Kerianne Flynn, Amanda Nguyen (a civil rights activist and astrophysicist), and Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer who worked for Nasa. The rocket launched from Blue Origin’s site in the West Texas Desert and flew the crew over the Karman Line – the internationally recognised boundary of space – at an altitude of 100km (62 miles).
‘Look at the moon…Look at the Earth…wow,’ could be heard over the radio link. It is not exactly profound stuff. The mission? To float about – weightlessly and aimlessly – in space for a total of three minutes before returning to Earth.
‘It’s not just about going to space, it’s about what all these women bring back and the stories they’re going to be be able to tell, the lives they’re going to be able to touch,’ said Sanchez before the flight. ‘I get to go with five incredible women explorers – storytellers – to inspire new generations to be interested in space exploration,’ she cooed.
Far be it from me to spoil the party, but this is not space exploration. Sanchez is a former TV presenter, about to get married to one of the world’s richest men who just happens to own the space rocket.
Katy Perry has also been drinking from the same fountain of delusional self-indulgence: ‘I’m really excited…We are all made of stardust and it’ll be exciting to see them twinkle from that site and have such an appreciation for Mother Earth when we see it that way’. She went on to suggest the trip would encourage young girls to go into space in the future with ‘no limitations’. Really? Previous passenger trips with Blue Origin have cost more than $1 million (£760,000) a seat. Only for rich girls, then.
It has been reported that the crew trained for all of two days ahead of the trip. Rather depressingly, much of the coverage of their journey into space featured talk of flared jump suits and other fashion accessories. The female crew appeared more than happy with this agenda, saying that lipstick, eyelash extensions and hair styles matter. The bible of female empowerment, according to Katy Perry, goes like this: ‘Space is finally going to be glam…We are going to put the “ass” in “astronaut”’.
Is it churlish to point out that she is not an astronaut, or certainly not in any conventional sense of the word? Nguyen, who posed with her crew mates for Elle magazine, was equally effusive: ‘I think it’s so important for people to see us like that. This dichotomy of engineer and scientist and then beauty and fashion…Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.’
Well, eat your heart out, Neil Armstrong.
This trip into space is anything but a boost for feminism or whatever these pampered celebrities choose to focus on. Yes, women can go into space with no limitations – as long as they are rich, famous or happen to be on close terms with a billionaire in this particular case. A Soviet cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, became the first woman in orbit in 1963 – these self-declared explorers are no Tereshkova. Space travel is supposedly about furthering scientific knowledge and bringing benefits to humanity. This shameless and tawdry publicity stunt does not qualify on either count.
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