On Monday April 14, 2025 Blue Origin launched the first all-female flight to space in almost 60 years. The mission was called the New Shepard (NS-31) Mission. The flight’s crew included pop star Katy Perry, TV show host Gayle King, journalist Lauren Sanchez, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen. The women were launched from the Blue Origin West Texas launching site, they were in orbit for a few minutes, and were returned to earth 11 minutes after the launch.
While the mission was a success, it has gained massive popularity on social media, but all the fame from the launch has not been nothing but negative. Backlash from the public has been clawing at Blue Origin, such rumors and conspiracies about the space shuttles door being fake. Junior Lilly Ferrari believes “the launch was to allow other outside people to be able to view space for like research purposes,” Ferrari claims “but I feel like that whole aspect was quickly torn apart because of the people who boarded the launch and how they displayed it to the media.”
Concerns on the cost of the mission have also been the public focus. Prior to the launch, each crew member had to make a deposit of $150,000. Each minute in space cost the crew about $1 million dollars. So in total, the mission was about $11 million dollars just to be in space for a whopping eleven minutes. Emma Matheny, junior, says she “completely agrees that it is a pointless way to spend money when there are so many other things to put that money towards,” Matheny shares, “that money could’ve gone towards so many other things to help people who are maybe less fortunate.”