{"id":25963,"date":"2025-04-14T19:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25963"},"modified":"2025-04-15T01:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T01:26:04","slug":"blue-origins-first-all-female-spaceflight-stunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25963","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin\u2019s First All-Female Spaceflight Stunt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Blue Origin\u2019s all-female flight proves that women are now free to enjoy capitalism\u2019s most extravagant spoils alongside rich men.<\/p>\n

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This morning, Jeff Bezos\u2019 private spaceflight startup, Blue Origin, launched six well-known women into space. The company documented the event with a livestream hosted by the sportscaster Charissa Thompson. The celebrities Kris Jenner, Orlando Bloom and Oprah Winfrey watched from the ground. Bezos himself escorted the crew to the capsule. As the rocket blasted into the sky, live audio from inside the ship was broadcast down to Earth. One of the occupants could be heard screaming: \u201cOh my goddess!\u201d<\/p>\n

Bezos has said that it\u2019s his generation\u2019s job to \u201cbuild a road to space, so that future generations can unleash their creativity.\u201d Now he has made his spaceship into the world\u2019s most extravagant influencer platform. The flight\u2019s roster seems to have been assembled with the energy of an American Girl doll collection, with seats awarded to women with different claims to fame and relevance. There was the pop star Katy Perry, the journalist Gayle King, the aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, the feminist activist Amanda Nguyen, the film producer Kerianne Flynn and Lauren S\u00e1nchez \u2014 the television journalist, aviation businesswoman, philanthropist and children\u2019s book author who is engaged to marry Bezos.<\/p>\n

Bezos\u2019 company has promoted this as the \u201cfirst all-woman spaceflight\u201d<\/a> since the Soviet Union cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she made a solo trip to the Earth\u2019s orbit in 1963. Tereshkova spent three days in space, circled the Earth 48 times and landed an international celebrity and feminist icon. The Blue Origin flight attempted to reverse-engineer that historic moment: By taking established celebrities and activists and launching them into space, it applied a feminist sheen to Blue Origin and made its activities feel socially relevant by association.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin pitched the flight as a gambit to encourage girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers and to, as S\u00e1nchez put it in an Elle cover story on the trip<\/a>, inspire \u201cthe next generation of explorers.\u201d But the flight was recreational, and its passengers are not space professionals but space tourists. Their central mission was to experience weightlessness, view the Earth from above, and livestream it. They are like payload specialists with a specialty in marketing private rockets. If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism\u2019s most decadent spoils alongside the world\u2019s wealthiest men.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Though women remain severely underrepresented in the aerospace field worldwide, they do regularly escape the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. More than 100 have gone to space since Sally Ride<\/a> became the first American woman to do so in 1983. If an all-women spaceflight were chartered by, say, NASA, it might represent the culmination of many decades of serious investment in female astronauts. (In 2019, NASA was embarrassingly forced to scuttle an all-women spacewalk when it realized it did not have enough suits that fit them.) An all-women Blue Origin spaceflight signifies only that several women have amassed the social capital to be friends with Lauren S\u00e1nchez.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin is one of several private spaceflight companies \u2014 among them Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and SpaceX \u2014 now offering rich people and their friends access to space. Its New Shepard rocket is self-piloting, and the six women had no technical duties on the flight. Though two participants had some aerospace experience (Bowe worked for NASA, and Nguyen interned there), S\u00e1nchez has said she picked them all because they are \u201cstorytellers\u201d who could step off the flight and promote their experiences through journalism, film and song. To Blue Origin, their value lies expressly in their amateurism. Kristin Fisher, a journalist and the daughter of the NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, who joined the livestream, called the flight\u2019s roster \u201cso refreshing.\u201d In the early days of human spaceflight, astronauts \u201cwere all white male military test pilots, and they had to have \u2018the right stuff.\u2019 You could never talk about nerves, or being nervous, or your feelings,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cBut now, in 2025, it is<\/em> the right stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Blue Origin\u2019s all-female flight proves that women are now free to enjoy capitalism\u2019s most extravagant spoils alongside rich men.This morning, Jeff Bezos\u2019 private spaceflight startup, Blue Origin, launched six well-known women into space. The company documented the event with a livestream hosted by the sportscaster Charissa Thompson. The celebrities Kris Jenner, Orlando Bloom and Oprah Winfrey watched from the ground. Bezos himself escorted the crew to the capsule. As the rocket blasted into the sky, live audio from inside the ship was broadcast down to Earth. One of the occupants could be heard screaming: \u201cOh my goddess!\u201dBezos has said that it\u2019s his generation\u2019s job to \u201cbuild a road to space, so that future generations can unleash their creativity.\u201d Now he has made his spaceship into the world\u2019s most extravagant influencer platform. The flight\u2019s roster seems to have been assembled with the energy of an American Girl doll collection, with seats awarded to women with different claims to fame and relevance. There was the pop star Katy Perry, the journalist Gayle King, the aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, the feminist activist Amanda Nguyen, the film producer Kerianne Flynn and Lauren S\u00e1nchez \u2014 the television journalist, aviation businesswoman, philanthropist and children\u2019s book author who is engaged to marry Bezos.Bezos\u2019 company has promoted this as the \u201cfirst all-woman spaceflight\u201d since the Soviet Union cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she made a solo trip to the Earth\u2019s orbit in 1963. Tereshkova spent three days in space, circled the Earth 48 times and landed an international celebrity and feminist icon. The Blue Origin flight attempted to reverse-engineer that historic moment: By taking established celebrities and activists and launching them into space, it applied a feminist sheen to Blue Origin and made its activities feel socially relevant by association.Blue Origin pitched the flight as a gambit to encourage girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers and to, as S\u00e1nchez put it in an Elle cover story on the trip, inspire \u201cthe next generation of explorers.\u201d But the flight was recreational, and its passengers are not space professionals but space tourists. Their central mission was to experience weightlessness, view the Earth from above, and livestream it. They are like payload specialists with a specialty in marketing private rockets. If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism\u2019s most decadent spoils alongside the world\u2019s wealthiest men.Though women remain severely underrepresented in the aerospace field worldwide, they do regularly escape the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. More than 100 have gone to space since Sally Ride became the first American woman to do so in 1983. If an all-women spaceflight were chartered by, say, NASA, it might represent the culmination of many decades of serious investment in female astronauts. (In 2019, NASA was embarrassingly forced to scuttle an all-women spacewalk when it realized it did not have enough suits that fit them.) An all-women Blue Origin spaceflight signifies only that several women have amassed the social capital to be friends with Lauren S\u00e1nchez.Blue Origin is one of several private spaceflight companies \u2014 among them Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and SpaceX \u2014 now offering rich people and their friends access to space. Its New Shepard rocket is self-piloting, and the six women had no technical duties on the flight. Though two participants had some aerospace experience (Bowe worked for NASA, and Nguyen interned there), S\u00e1nchez has said she picked them all because they are \u201cstorytellers\u201d who could step off the flight and promote their experiences through journalism, film and song. To Blue Origin, their value lies expressly in their amateurism. Kristin Fisher, a journalist and the daughter of the NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, who joined the livestream, called the flight\u2019s roster \u201cso refreshing.\u201d In the early days of human spaceflight, astronauts \u201cwere all white male military test pilots, and they had to have \u2018the right stuff.\u2019 You could never talk about nerves, or being nervous, or your feelings,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cBut now, in 2025, it is the right stuff.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25965,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25963"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25966,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25963\/revisions\/25966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}