A pop star, a TV host and a billionaire’s fiancée walk into a private rocket ship. The pop star turns to the others and asks: “Is this what feminism looks like?” According to the space technology company Blue Origin, owned and founded by the Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, the answer seems to be a resounding yes.
On Thursday Blue Origin announced it would be launching the first-ever all-female commercial flight to space with a crew of astronauts including US singer Katy Perry, the morning news host (– and close friend of Oprah Winfrey – Gayle King and Bezos’s own partner, the journalist Lauren Sánchez, who reportedly organised the mission, which will happen sometime this spring.
Also on the all-female mission will be the film producer Kerianne Flynn and the former Nasa scientist Aisha Bowe, as well as Amanda Nguyen, an entrepreneur and sexual-assault activist, who the company suggests will boost the flight’s social progress plaudits.
“As the first Vietnamese and south-east Asian female astronaut, Amanda’s flight is a symbol of reconciliation between the US and Vietnam, and will highlight science as a tool for peace,” the company said in its announcement.
As well as it being the first all-female commercial space flight, Blue Origin emphasised that this will be the first all-female mission into space – full stop – in more than 60 years.
In the midst of a global backlash against feminism, and alongside growing wealth inequality, the absurdity of a tech billionaire flinging a handful of female millionaires a few feet into outer space and spinning it as a historic “#girlbosswin” feels fittingly dystopian. The social justice milestones for race, female empowerment and even geopolitical relations are laughably thin and are little more than a PR stunt for Bezos’s pet project.
But despite the flimsiness of the concept, the celebrities have suggested their flight will have groundbreaking effects on our world and future generations. In the press release, repetitive cliches abound: Bowe hopes her story “from community college to space” will inspire young people to “pursue their dreams”, while Sánchez wants to “inspire the next generation of explorers”. Both Perry and Flynn said they hoped it would inspire their children to “reach for the stars”.
It is obvious the arguments for this flight’s significance are simultaneously unserious and impressively lazy. But that farce only becomes starker when we look at what Bezos has been doing in his other business ventures since the start of the year.
Amazon was a key part of the cohort kissing Donald Trump’s ring after he won re-election in November, donating $1m to his inaugural fund, and is in the middle of making the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) rollbacks that have been spearheaded by Trump – similar to ones we have seen from almost every big tech company since he took office.
It is worth noting that showy feminist gestures and shallow diversity initiatives were a fundamental part of DEI corporate culture.
Just last week Bezos experienced a huge backlash after announcing changes to the opinion section of the Washington Post, which he has owned since 2013, saying that from now on the paper would only publish opinions that defended “personal liberties and free markets”.
He also announced that the former opinion editor had been removed from his role after disagreeing with these new policies. Marty Baron, a highly respected former editor of the Washington Post, described the move as a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression”.
The pseudo-progressiveness of this celebrity space mission, coupled with Bezos’s conduct in his other businesses, should mean we are under no illusion what purpose these flights serve. Bezos is not the only tech billionaire in the space game: he is in direct competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
There are clear incentives to be hitting supposed milestones, no matter how flimsy. They are far from an act of benevolence. And while the celebrities onboard may get something out of the flight, personally and professionally, it may not all be positive.
When the Star Trek actor William Shatner went on a Blue Origin mission in 2021, he was visibly shaken after disembarking and later said: “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral … It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered.”
We will undoubtedly see more flights such as this one in the coming months and years, where increasingly higher-profile stars and hammier gimmicks are used to promote Blue Origin’s image as the leader of private space travel.
But no amount of supposedly landmark achievements will make these missions anything more than wish fulfilment for a billionaire’s boyish personal hobby.
We are witnessing the start of a new, much lamer space race that translates into nothing meaningful for our world, social progress or even the celebrities on board – but a whole lot for the man who gets to use them to pad his reputation and his pockets.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
