Headline Roundup • April 16th, 2025
Blue Origin's All-Female Space Flight Draws Criticisms
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A group of female celebrities boarded a rocket owned by Amazon and Washington Post (Lean Left bias) owner Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin for an 11-minute trip to space on Monday.
The Details: The crew included pop star Katy Perry, television personality Gayle King, journalist Lauren Sanchez, former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. While some praised the all-female crew, others criticized them for supposedly being wasteful.
From the Left: “Space tourism is not feminism. It is consumer capitalism, at its most inaccessible,” an MSNBC (Left bias) piece said, noting a seat on the ship requires a $150,000 deposit.
From the Right: Several outlets on the right highlighted critics on the left, with Townhall (Right) saying celebrities were “eating their own.” A piece in the Daily Caller (Right) called the event “boring as hell.”
From the Center: A writer in UnHerd (Center) pointed out that China's space program is rapidly improving and that private companies give the US an advantage. “All in all, the frivolity of the Katy Perry mission should not be taken as being representative of the industry as a whole. In fact, it is a sign of confidence and health. Note that Lauren Sánchez, Bezos’ fiancée, was on board. What was once highly risky is becoming more routine,” he said.
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Featured Coverage of this Story
U.S. News & World Report
Blue Origin via AP
When Katy Perry dropped the single “Woman’s World” last summer, critics and fans alike slammed the pop star for being out of touch. The song and its accompanying video felt very early 2000s with its phony message of female empowerment. While stomping around in kitschy costumes, Perry tells her audience that women can be both soft and strong (I’m imagining toilet paper), and sexy and confident, too. What a revelation! If watching “Women’s World” made you feel like a time traveler to a low-rise jeans, Von Dutch trucker hat past,...
UnHerd
UnHerd
Unless something goes wrong, most spaceflights are little reported in the news. Monday’s launch of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, though, was an exception. Its all-female crew attracted a huge amount of attention, thanks in part to the inclusion of the pop star Katy Perry. The six women comprised the eleventh crew to fly on this vehicle, with previous passengers including company founder Jeff Bezos and Star Trek actor William Shatner.
These flights do not go into orbit. Instead, they briefly pop above the atmosphere to give the crew...
The Daily Caller
The Daily Caller
Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez were among a group of women who embarked Monday on a shockingly underwhelming trip to space.
The high-profile launch saw the celebrity crew don glitzy, ultra-feminine outfits and quite literally leave Earth. Despite the hype, however, the mission fell short of expectations. For one, the entire trip lasted just 11 minutes. And for fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the adventure, the experience inside the rocket wasn’t even broadcast, leaving many wondering what the point of this much-anticipated event really was.
