An out-of-this-world and one-of-a-kind mission: a female-only occupied shuttle rocketing into outer space. That’s how private space tourism company Blue Origin advertised this week’s trip just past the Kármán Line, the boundary between our atmosphere and outer space. The truth is less marketable: many women have been to space; the excursion was out of this world for only about 11 minutes; and the whole stunt was really nothing but out of touch. Blue Origin’s ‘historic achievement for women across the globe’ is layered with misogyny and ignorance and is just not that cool.

This past Monday morning in western Texas, billionaire Amazon founder and Blue Origin creator Jeff Bezos ushered six famous women onto one of his private spaceflight company’s rockets, the New Shepard, escorting them on a journey into space. Singer Katy Perry and Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, were accompanied by TV personality Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen on the Blue Origin shuttle. I mean, one step for well-known media moguls has to be one leap for womankind? Right?

There are several problems associated with the excursion that have (appropriately) caused backlash across the internet in the last few days. First is the male-centric and idealistic form of feminism that Bezos is supposedly trying to promote through the journey. Blue Origin sold the flight as “the first all-female spaceflight since 1963” in reference to when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova took a solo flight and became the first woman in space. Tereshkova’s mission was a monumental feat, one that opened doors and inspired many female astronauts across the globe. This trip, not so much.  

The problematic nature of the way the journey was marketed can be summarized by an interview that Elle magazine conducted before takeoff, asking the women their thoughts on how “this will be the first time anybody went to space with their hair and makeup done.” Katy Perry responded with excitement that “space is going to finally be glam.” The question itself isn’t great, and the responses worsened the problematic rhetoric. When an all-female expedition is boiled down to “glam,” it takes away any other sort of complex or sophisticated nature that makes up being a woman.   

The spaceflight was set up as something that the masses love to consume in the media: glamorous and wealthy women. Yes, there was an activist and an aerospace engineer on board as well, but in order for Blue Origin to profit off this the most, they capitalized on the flashy and alluring nature of the women clad in designer space suits. In attempts to launch a feminist movement came the prejudiced and outdated portrayal of women, leaving them to serve as nothing more than a visually appealing PR stunt for Bezos’s empire.  

Yes, obviously women are multifaceted and brains can absolutely exist in tandem with beauty in whatever way a woman may choose, but this PR stunt has eclipsed the several women in the aerospace industry who made immense strides and deserve recognition. There are so many women who are deserving of mass media attention for their research or work in male-dominated fields like aerospace engineering, and it’s not fair to them to laud Katy Perry and continue to overlook their meaningful, actually boundary-breaking progress. 

This venture also raises the question of where excessively funded space technology companies, like Blue Origin, should be focusing their resources. Instead of spending incomprehensible amounts of money on space tourism for the rich and famous, research and time should be put into funding qualified people who have been historically misrepresented in this industry to conduct beneficial research for all of humanity.  

Although complete ticket prices are not accessible to the public, the company requires a deposit to secure a seat, beginning at $150,000. Blue Origin has a goal to decrease the cost of trips to space in order to increase the number of people able to have access to space tourism, but in our current day, it is still infeasible for anyone outside of the super wealthy. According to Reuters, the launch of the New Shepard is estimated to cost “between $1 to $3 million.”

Yet another crucial issue with this private space tourism is the amount of pollution emitted per launch, which is excessive and contributes to the pressing crisis of climate change. In a Variety post on X, Katy Perry is quoted, in reference to her reactions on the trip, saying. “Oh my God, we have to protect our mother,” meaning Mother Earth. Ironic that, although Blue Origin is more sustainable than other space companies, one 11-minute ride per passenger “emit[s] as much carbon as one person emits over their lifetime.” How is this possibly an excursion that emphasizes the importance of the preservation of our planet?

This again demonstrates the hypocritical nature of their journey into space. Instead of qualified individuals attempting to uncover something or conduct research, it was a photo-op,ne that was expensive and negatively impacted our atmosphere. This aesthetic feminism only serves to weaken the larger movement and trivialise the vital work that still needs to be done in the fight for equality.

It’s not that the group shouldn’t have been women or that there is anything wrong with a female-only space flight, but it’s about sending the wrong message. Regardless of who participated, the conveyed intent of the trip is what is concerning. In a video that showcases the moment when the six passengers were experiencing weightlessness for the first time, they all cheered and yelled in unison, “take up space!” in regard to the necessity of women holding their ground in male-dominated fields. In reality, they are just taking space away from genuinely meaningful actions. 

Fundamentally, the problem lies within the ethical implications of the space tourism industry. Yes, making space more accessible is an intriguing concept, but we must focus our efforts on more time-sensitive and pressing problems that people like Jeff Bezos have the funding to address. If we love Mother Earth so much that we want to see her in her glory from outer space, we must first try to protect her from the ground.