Very few people have the opportunity to go into space. Some people will work for NASA for many years, training daily just for the possibility that they might go into space for a day or two. Things have been changing recently, however, with the space programs that promise to make space more of a tourism opportunity. This has been done with the Blue Origin program, and recently they left Earth with a group of women.
One of the women who was on the recent flight was Gayle King. As a TV personality, people are familiar with her but many were not very happy with how things went on the Blue Origin trip to the edge of space.
In fact, some people are relentlessly trolling Gayle King, saying that the trip was nothing more than a ‘space ride’ and even saying that it was sexist.
Gail, at 70 years old, was on board the spacecraft when it made the 11-minute flight into sub-orbit. Other people on the flight included Lauren Sanchez and Katy Perry. The video from inside the capsule showed them floating and loving the view while they were holding items of personal interest to them. King spoke about the trajectory that they had and said that it essentially ‘duplicated’ that of the first Americans to go into space, Alan Shepard. She said it is the same trajectory that he traveled in 1961. Many online have not been very happy with the space trip, and even some celebrities have been making fun of it, calling it nothing but PR for the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos.
In an interview, King said: “This is what bothers me, I’ve certainly read some of the stuff being said online and it’s coming from people I know, people I consider friends. Space is not an either/or … Just because you do something in space doesn’t mean you’re taking anything away from Earth.”
Ratajkowski was somebody who was not favorable of the flight and said so in a video on TikTok. “That space mission this morning? That’s end time s**t. Like, this is beyond parody. That you care about Mother Earth and it’s about Mother Earth, and you’re going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that’s single-handedly destroying the planet? Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space. For what? What was the marketing there?”
King, on the other hand, came back to say that Blue Origin is fully dedicated to ‘make the planet cleaner’.
She also wasn’t very happy at those who were calling the space mission a ‘ride’. She said: “You have never said to a (male) astronaut, ‘What a ride.’ (Don’t) call it a ride. It’s called a flight or a journey. A ride implies it’s something frivolous or lighthearted. There’s nothing frivolous about what we did.”
The day after the flight, she discussed things with Aisha Bowe, who was also on the flight. She was a NASA rocket scientist and added: “There’s so many things that have been developed in space that benefit Earth… from pharmaceuticals to, like, research on agriculture.
“And, you know, I paused there because we did research and it was emotional… Part of what I accomplished in my flight was I was looking at the future of being able to produce crops that can withstand harsh environments so we can look at food security here on Earth, and simultaneously, we also were able to certify that device so more people could do research on New Shepard.”
Despite what they said, many on social media felt that she was simply inflating her own importance and making more of a name for herself. The following are some of the posts that did so: