Why Katy Perry is the perfect person to go to space with Jeff Bezos on Monday

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 thankful

Ever 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.

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.

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‘They’ve had training. They understand what they’re doing, and they will experience things that I hope will change their view on Earth.’

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.

‘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 tokenism

Dr 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.

They are going to space, but there isn’t a risk of getting stuck up there.

Even if they did, the ‘all-female crew’ couldn’t do anything about it. There are no pilots on the plane. As the whole flight is fully operated from the ground, they are sitting ducks.

Yes, it’s a brave thing to do. But it also requires no skill. It’s not like an all-female crew have gone on a mission to the International Space Station for 6 months. They are responsible for… nothing.

They also aren’t going up there to do anything other than to self-serve.

This venture has been criticised as a mere ‘joyride’ for the rich and famous, without any meaning other than a flimsy feminist label. (While Blue Origin hasn’t publicly released a specific prices, reports suggest that tickets could cost at least $200,000 (£154,000) per person).

Actress Olivia Munn blasted the Blue Origin mission, saying: ‘I know this is probably obnoxious, but like, it’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs.

She added: ‘What are you guys gonna do up in space? What are you doing up there?’

‘If you wanna go to space, why do you need to tell us about it, you know? It’s just like, go up there, have a good time, come on down.’

The capitalisation of space is inevitable

Politics aside, perhaps we need to look at space travel as an extension of air travel, which also began life as a playground for the rich, and over the years became more accessible.

‘The Space tourism model that Blue Origin are selling and promoting is part of a transition that the entire space sector is going through as it shifts away from fully government funded taxpayer money to a more commercial model,’ says Jackson.

‘That is part of the transition that all sectors go through. If you go back 100 years, the early days of airplane flight were government-backed flights.’

But not this kind of capitalism, thanks very much

Some criticised Perry for cosying up to Bezos for the mission on X, with Renée Duncan writing: ‘Read the room, Katy! First you endorse former GOP billionaire Rick Caruso for LA mayor, then you chose to work again with Dr. Luke, and now you’re partnering with oligarch Bezos to go to space.’

Here lies the real problem.

Over the past year, Bezos has reversed his previously critical stance on Donald Trump – who has too many sexual assault allegations made against him to count on two hands (all of which, he denies).

Amazon donated $1,000,000,000 to Trump’s inauguration day, which was streamed live on Prime Video. He stood in line with the other billionaires to welcome Trump into his second term as President.

Trump has also taken credit for the elimination of Roe vs Wade – which gave women bodily autonomy for 50 years – marking a huge back step in women rights in the US.

‘After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,’ he proudly declared on social media.

Next to Bezos is Elon Musk, who is now directly impacting US policy with a role in Trump’s cabinet. He owns competing space tourism company Space X.

So it seems space has not just been capitalised, but it’s wearing a red MAGA hat.

By going on this flight, Perry – who says she is a Democrat and that this flight is for little girls everywhere – just proved how little these sentiments actually mean.

There is a point to be made that this backlash is sexist in itself. Why aren’t men placed under the same microscope as women? I don’t remember actor William Shatner getting any flak for his 2021 Blue Origin trip.

‘We have all male crews all the time and I want to get to a place where an all female crew is just the norm and part of it and not newsworthy,’ Jackson says.

Why should women have to do extra work to be worthy of seeing Earth from above? They shouldn’t at all.

But if you’re doing it in the name of feminism, you’ve got to mean it.

It’s got Katy Perry written all over it

It seems, after all, it’s not so shocking that Perry is going to space. Her brand of feminism has long been outdated and surface level, just like this Blue Origin ‘historic’ flight.

It all reeks of Perry’s latest single Woman’s World, which sees her flouncing around as a sexy builder singing about female empowerment.

That would be fine if it wasn’t produced by Dr Luke, who Kesha accused of raping her (which he denied) in a very public and lengthy legal battle.

‘Space is going to finally be glam. Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the “ass” in astronaut,’ Perry said, on her plans to get fully glammed up for the Blue Origin trip on Monday.