Space flight as a celebrity event: Blue Origin sends prominent women into space
For the eleventh time, Blue Origin has shot people across the frontier of space. But this time, company boss Jeff Bezos must have been particularly excited.
Kerianne Flynn, Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez, Aisha Bowe, Gayle King, Amanda Nguyễn (l-r).
(Image: Blue Origin)
Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin launched an all-female crew across the frontier of space for the first time on Monday, turning it into a veritable celebrity event. While Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez, singer Kate Perry and US TV presenter Gayle King were on board the capsule with three other women, the events on the ground were watched by Oprah Winfrey, Khloé Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Orlando Bloom, among others. In the livestream, one passenger was heard shouting, “We're in space”. The whole flight lasted just over 10 minutes.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externes YouTube-Video (Google Ireland Limited) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (Google Ireland Limited) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
The flight with the mission designation NS-31 (for “New Shepard”, the name of the rocket used) was Blue Origin's eleventh in which a crew crossed the boundary into space, but as usual, only for a few minutes. In total, Jeff Bezos' space company has now flown 58 people into space. The flight of Sánchez and the other women was explicitly presented as a PR campaign; what they all have in common is that they are “storytellers” who will talk about their life-changing experience to inspire generations of people, the company claims.
Sung in space
After the successful landing, Bezos personally opened the hatch of the space capsule and greeted the crew. The six were then allowed to talk about how they had experienced the flight. Sánchez, for example, said that it had been quiet but also very lively. Looking down, she thought, “we're all in the same boat”. Kate Perry had announced that she wanted to sing in the brief weightlessness. After landing, King said that the 40-year-old had actually performed a few lines of the hit “What a wonderful World” in space. After landing, she knelt on the desert floor and kissed the sand.
Videos by heise
Blue Origin has not provided any details about the cost of the mission, but it is estimated that a flight will cost several hundred thousand US dollars. However, the company has already invited celebrities several times for PR purposes and covered the costs. One of the best known is probably William Shatner, the Canadian actor who became famous as Captain James T. Kirk in the science fiction series Star Trek. The flight of the six women was also criticized in advance, with US actress Olivia Munn saying that the undertaking seemed insatiable. Other female colleagues made fun of it.
(mho)
