|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... |
Leave Katy Alone
By Lynn Scheid
In 2007, a teenage boy sobbed into a webcam and screamed, “Leave Britney alone!” He was ridiculed then, but over time, people realized he was reacting to something real: the public’s love of building someone up just to tear them down when they misstep.
That’s where we are again. This time it’s not Britney. It’s Katy. And yes, she earned the backlash—but let’s put it where it really belongs.
Blue Origin’s NS-31 flight on April 14 wasn’t a space mission. It was a ride. A fully remote-controlled, vertical amusement ride that lifted six wealthy, well-connected passengers just past the Kármán line—about 66 miles up—and dropped them safely back down in less than 11 minutes. No pilots. No controls. No danger. No purpose.
Yet afterward, the passengers—Katy, Lauren Sánchez, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, and Kerianne Flynn—spoke to the world as if they’d just returned from lunar orbit. They used the language of astronauts: crew, mission, trailblazing. They called it historic. They claimed it broke barriers. They did interviews like they’d earned medals.
They floated for three minutes and called it progress.
And—I’m told—one of them even farted mid-float, which technically means they did leave something behind in space. So there’s that.
Let’s put this “achievement” in perspective.
The Lockheed U-2 spy plane, developed in the 1950s, routinely flies at 70,000 feet (13.2 miles). Pilots wear full pressure suits. They fly solo, manually, and often over hostile territory with no backup.
The SR-71 Blackbird, built in the 1960s, cruised at 85,000 feet (16 miles) and Mach 3. It outran surface-to-air missiles without flinching. No remote controls. No champagne.
The X-15 rocket plane, flown by NASA and the Air Force, reached 67 miles altitude decades ago. Pilots earned their astronaut wings by flying the thing themselves under conditions that would make the Blue Origin capsule’s autopilot blush.
Then there’s Felix Baumgartner.
In 2012, with Red Bull as his sponsor and the eyes of the world on him, Baumgartner ascended to 128,000 feet—more than 24 miles high—in a balloon. He opened the hatch, stepped off a ledge, and free-fell from near-space at Mach 1.25, breaking the sound barrier with his body. No remote landing. No safe return guaranteed. No condescending press conference afterward. Just a parachute, pressure suit, and nerve.
He didn’t call himself a space explorer. He didn’t call it a mission. He didn’t call himself a crew.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin fires a preprogrammed rocket, gives its guests a few minutes of giggling weightlessness, and rolls them out to the press corps like they’ve just returned from deep space. It’s marketing, not exploration. A branded bounce, not a breakthrough.
Katy was the face that stuck—mostly because she looked like she didn’t know where she was, what she had done, or why anyone cared. Her post-flight remarks felt like a wine tasting at altitude. The others weren’t far behind—reciting scripted statements about empowerment while never once acknowledging how detached they were from the realities of, well, Earth.
And the public saw through it.
The backlash didn’t come because six women took a ride. It came because they took a ride and called it a revolution. They demanded reverence for something they didn’t earn. They called themselves a crew when they were, at best, human cargo with media training.
Compare this “mission” to actual space efforts:
SpaceX flies trained astronauts for weeks at a time to the International Space Station, conducting science, docking with precision, and returning under manual reentry procedures.
NASA puts years into every launch, involving engineers, specialists, medical staff, and payload experts across dozens of mission phases.
Virgin Galactic, while also suborbital, uses piloted spaceplanes and aims to advance flight technology—not hashtags.
Red Bull Stratos? One guy jumped out of the sky in a pressure suit with no backup plan.
Blue Origin? It’s a remote-controlled bottle rocket that tosses millionaires up and down and sends them home with a tote bag and a talking point.
So no, this wasn’t a triumph for women in STEM. It wasn’t a barrier-breaker. It was a media event wrapped in chrome. And Katy, by speaking down and giggling her way through it, became the face of something far more frustrating than failure—the illusion of achievement.
She behaved badly. She spoke down. She got the blowback.
But maybe, like Britney, she’ll reflect, reckon, and return better.
In the meantime, let’s keep the story straight.
This was not space travel.
It was not a mission.
It was a $250,000 carnival ride on autopilot.
So yes—laugh. Critique. Demand honesty.
But when the press cycle ends and the next billionaire rocket lifts off, just remember—
Leave Katy alone.
