Recently, it seems like everyday we check the news to see something else we have to worry about. One more thing that makes us just a little bit more nervous about our future — like affording groceries. I think it’s fairly safe to say, though, that not many people are too concerned about who is going into space next.
Blue Origin, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos’ space flight company, agrees to disagree. The company recently announced its plans for its next crewed space flight. This time, it was an all-female crew.
Many household names were aboard the historic, and very short, space flight on Monday, April 11, including pop-icon Katy Perry and talk show host Gayle King. The trip only lasted about 11 minutes and took the crew up to just beyond the boundary of space.
After the trip was announced, actress Olivia Munn spoke her mind about the flight that is hailed to be historic on the talk show “Jenna and Friends,” and her opinion did not paint it in a very positive light.
Munn stated that she found the whole concept of it to be “gluttonous” and asked “What’s the point?” She also pointed out just how costly it is to send people to space, and how out of touch it seems when people are struggling to put food on the table for their families as prices creep higher and higher.
However harsh it may sound, I tend to agree with Munn. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great that there is incentive out there to send women to space, and I don’t mean to discredit how historic an all-female space flight crew is, but I think it is so unnecessary and wasteful.
My question is the same as Munn’s — why? The flight was only 11 minutes long but still cost millions of dollars. To me, it seems like there are countless better places that those millions of dollars could have gone that would be helpful to more people than just the celebrities who were chosen to go up to space.
Not to mention the fact that celebrities were selected to go, this also doesn’t sit right with me. Why does Katy Perry, of all people, need to go to space? It cheapens the fact that it’s an all-female space flight in my eyes. Let the female astronauts who have worked their entire lives for this moment enjoy it.
Although it’s fun and cool to see women go up to space on the surface level, I think there is more to it and in our current socio-political climate, it just seems tasteless.
mkane10@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @blueorigin, Instagram
