Blue Origin Crew Member Gayle King Is FED UP With People Dismissing Her Heroic 11-Minute Trip To Space As "Just A Ride"
The easy take to have when you watch the all-female flight crew consisting of astronauts Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez, is to mock them for cosplaying as real-life NASA-level space travelers. That's been the general consensus ever since they returned to Earth and were heralded (in some circles) as heroes. As pioneers of... something. Pioneers of female space travel, I suppose. That because of what they did that day, young women everywhere will be inspired to become really fucking rich and famous, or marry the right billionaire, so that one day they too can ascend 62 miles above earth in a giant penis shaped rocket, experience weightlessness, see the curvature of the earth, and parachute back down in time for brunch.
See now I'm doing it too. Those are the easy jokes to make. In my noble opinion, the internet is way too quick to attack people for simply being proud of something. For simply claiming to be an inspiration to all womankind. We throw stones and jump down throats without bothering to do any background research at all. We read one headline, or see one viral tweet, and everyone piles on from there. When I open Twitter, all I see is people shaming this crew of women for acting like astronauts when their mission to space was nothing more than a rollercoaster ride for rich people. And I'd be lying if I said that isn't what it looks like to me as well. But maybe there's more to Blue Origin than that. There has to be. I mean listen to the passion in Gayle King's voice. Look at the real life tears rolling down Oprah Winfrey's face as her good friend Gayle goes soaring through the sky.
That sure doesn't look like something Gayle King just rolled out of bed and decided to do one day. So before we flippantly deem the Blue Origin spaceflight a "ride", the least we can do is take the 5 minutes to research what actually went into it.
Specifically, I'd like to know what this crew of travelers had to do in preparation for their historic journey. What training was required? What qualifications does Jeff Bezos' fiancee have that made her suitable for space travel? CBS Mornings interviewed former NASA Astronaut Trainess Dr. Kimberly Robinson to answer the question, "How exactly do people prepare for something out of this world?"
See. They arrived 3 days early. So right off the bat, they didn't just "show up" one day and step onto a rocket. They showed up one day and stepped onto a rocket a few days later. That's almost half of a whole week. Do you know how much money Katy Perry can make in 3 nights worth of concerts? How many lives she could save? How many young women she could put through college? Probably hundreds. But why help hundreds when you can inspire millions?
As Dr. Robinson said, Blue Origin's most recent all-female crew spent three days in training. The training consisted of multiple things:
1. Going Over The Vehicle
2. Getting Safety Briefings
3. Working Through Mission Simulations
You don't show up 3-days early to Cedar Point to ride the Top Thrill Dragster. But I'm still a bit stuck on the physical, and even the mental training that was required of these women to ready them for space travel. What did they put their bodies through to assure their lungs didn't collapse. To assure their faces didn't melt off. To assure their bodies didn't explode into a million pieces. Or whatever happens to an untrained body when it goes to space. What did they need to sacrifice in order to go on this mission? Thankfully, CBS's perfectly racially ambiguous host asked Dr. Robinson point blank what training was necessary to prepare for the G-forces and weightlessness they would be experiencing. To which Dr. Robinson replied:
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"It's very exciting. I trained astronauts during parabolic flight where we actually experience weightlessness, and during those flights I experienced about 2 G's. This crew will experience about 2.5 G's on ascent. And I will tell you, it is noteworthy. And then of course, even more so, they will float when they get at apogee for about 4 minutes. They will have some weightlessness. Then they will descend. The descent will ratchet up the G's they will feel up to about 5 G's. It will be a tremendous force on their body. They will feel pushback in their seats. They will feel it in their lungs. It's very exciting. It's a profound effect, and I'm just very excited to hear about it when they land."
I don't want to jump to conclusions and say Dr. Robinson avoided the question, and simply hyped up the intensity of the mission to distract from the fact that there really isn't a lick of training required. It all sounds very exciting, but she objectively didn't answer the question. I feel like that's the #1 thing the many, many, many, many, many haters are hung up on. There's a sense that pretty much anybody who fits the height and weight requirements of an average Six Flags roller coaster would be perfectly qualified for this trip. That you could pick just about anyone off the street, and they too could travel to space if given a ticket. Unfortunately for this crew of pioneers, nobody seems to have debunked that idea. I'm afraid at this point it's just a fact.
I really think that's all people would have needed. At minimum, could we have at least gotten a clip of Katy Perry running on a treadmill in an oxygen mask. Maybe a graphic depicting a strict diet the crew adhered to leading up to the launch. Something about training their lungs to capacity, or getting their thetan levels up. Give us something. Anything at all people could point to that shows this crew made some sort of sacrifice greater than spending a few days in what looks like an astronaut fantasy camp.
But again, I don't want to be cynical. I'm really trying to give this all-female crew some semblance of credit. Even if I have to reach deep into my bag for it.
I will say, there are female celebrities in the world who wouldn't do this. Some people are scared of heights. So credit to this crew for not being complete cowards. And if there are young girls out there who look up to the likes of Katy Perry, and somehow Katy Perry going to space inspires in them a passion for science & engineering, then that's something too. Maybe that young girl parlays her newfound passion into good grades, a prestigious degree, and a job at SpaceX. Maybe she'll be the one who personally builds the rocket that takes the first crew of Elon Musk superfans to Mars. It's not the craziest thing in the world to think a child watching their favorite celebrity go up in space may inspire some sort of educational interest.
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And to be fair, part what Gayle King is saying is true. What Blue Origin has been able to do is pretty incredible. They made a rocket that allows the average person to travel to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. But therein lies Gayle's problem. The technology is so advanced, and Blue Origin has the mission down to such a science, that it's not really impressive to be one of the passengers. That's where the disconnect is. I can't in good conscious say that Blue Origin passengers accomplished anything. The Blue Origin company accomplished something. Gayle King has accomplished a lot in her life to be afforded the opportunity to make the trip. What Blue Origin is doing is a great next step in space exploration, and in this instance, Gayle King is one of the faces of that. Which again, I'm sure provided inspiration to some people. Much like Terry Crews' wacky commercials inspired me to buy Old Spice products. Come to think of it, that may be the perfect comparison. Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez did a commercial for space. Space is a great cause, and their celebrity helps promote it. But Terry Crews isn't the hero who created the Bearglove scented anti-perspirant.
I'm honestly not even sure what Gayle King is trying to say in her video. I don't know if she's more upset that people aren't giving her enough credit, or if she's more trying to defend what Blue Origin is doing. But it's pretty impossible to get on board with her point about how people would never say a man who went up in space simply "went for a ride". You think if Jake Paul went up on Blue Origin tomorrow, that he wouldn't get the exact same "you went on a ride" treatment? Of course he would. And do you know who nobody dismissed as, "going for a ride"? Any of these people..
Arguing whether or not it Gayle King went on a "ride" is all semantics anyways. But you can't compare what the Blue Origin rocket does to what Alan Shepard did, just because they took the same trajectory. That's insane. And if you're Gayle King, or Katy Perry, or Lauren Sanchez, you can't show up 3-days before a trip to space, run through a few flight simulations, go on an 11-minute round trip, and expect to be treated with the same level of respect as a NASA astronaut. C'mon Gayle. You get back what you put in. That's how life works. And in this case, you didn't have to put in that much. I'm willing to concede you may have helped inspire some girls across the world to do… something. But if all you inspired them to do was get a ride on Blue Origin someday… I'm sorry… that's a really cool thing to do… but I just don't think it's some incredible accomplishment.