Importance Score: 72 / 100 🔴
Limited Female Representation Persists in Aerospace Despite Occasional Spaceflights
Globally, women remain significantly underrepresented in the aerospace sector. Nevertheless, numerous women have ventured beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Since Sally Ride’s historic journey as the first American woman in space in 1983, over one hundred women have achieved this feat. A dedicated all-female space mission, potentially organized by an agency like NASA, could symbolize the culmination of substantial, long-term investment in female astronauts. (In a notable setback, NASA was compelled to cancel an all-women spacewalk in 2019 due to an insufficient number of appropriately sized spacesuits.) However, an all-women spaceflight orchestrated by Blue Origin merely indicates that the participants possess the social connections to be associated with figures like Lauren Sánchez.
The Rise of Private Space Tourism
Blue Origin is among a growing number of private spaceflight enterprises, including Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, and SpaceX, that now provide affluent individuals and their acquaintances access to space. Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft is autonomously operated, and the six women aboard had no operational tasks during the flight. While two participants possessed some prior aerospace experience – Bowe previously worked for NASA, and Nguyen held an internship there – Sánchez stated that she selected the crew primarily for their storytelling abilities. These women, she believed, could effectively disseminate their experiences through various media such as journalism, film, and music following the flight. Blue Origin seemingly values their status as non-professionals. Kristin Fisher, a journalist and daughter of NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, who participated in a livestream of the event, described the flight’s composition as “so refreshing.” She elaborated, noting that in the early era of human space exploration, astronauts “were exclusively white male military test pilots, required to possess ‘the right stuff.’ Expressions of nervousness or feelings were discouraged.” Fisher concluded, “Yet now, in 2025, that is ‘the right stuff.’”
Branding and Spectacle Take Center Stage
Sánchez commissioned her preferred fashion designers to create the mission attire, transforming the event into another branding opportunity. Souvenirs commemorating the flight, available on Blue Origin’s website, feature a stylized, modern shuttle patch design. This design incorporates symbolic elements representing individual crew members: a shooting-star microphone for King, an exploding firework for Perry, and a fly alluding to Sánchez’s 2024 children’s book about a dyslexic insect’s adventures. Each woman was encouraged to utilize her brief period of weightlessness to engage in an activity aligned with her personal interests. Nguyen planned to conduct two extremely short scientific experiments, one concerning menstruation, while Perry declared her intention to “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
The Message: Ambition and Access in the Space Age
The overarching message conveyed is that young girls can aspire to diverse roles, from rocket scientists to pop stars, television journalists to the partners of billionaires. These women, empowered to pursue varied ambitions and whims despite considerable expenses, could potentially earn a complimentary trip to space. They can seemingly achieve it all, including maintaining family life back on Earth. “Guess what?” Sánchez remarked to Elle magazine. “Moms go to space.” (Fisher’s mother, the first mother in space, accomplished this in 1984.)
Echoes of “Lean In” Philosophy in Space Tourism
This event evokes the advice Sheryl Sandberg shared with women in her memoir, “Lean In,” detailing her ascent within the technology industry. Recounting an instance when Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, offered Sandberg a position misaligned with her career aspirations, he advised: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” The underlying principle emphasizes the significance of proximity to power, potentially overshadowing the intrinsic value of the mission itself.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.