From Blastoff To Backlash: Blue Origin’s All-Female Mission Under Fire

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Mission Marks 11th Human Flight and First All-Woman Crew Since 1963

This week, a 10-minute rocket ride became a multi-day headline. Katy Perry reportedly sang “It’s A Wonderful World” and Gayle King beamed in zero gravity, as Lauren Sánchez—pilot, philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée—led Blue Origin’s first all-female crew to the edge of space. Joining them were civil rights advocate Amanda Nguyen, former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Together, they soared 65 miles above earth and landed before most people could finish their morning coffee.

America’s first all-female space crew in more than 60 years of human spaceflight, launched aboard Blue Origin’s NS-31—a self-flying rocket—immediately became a cultural flashpoint. While Blue Origin framed it as empowering, groundbreaking and long overdue, the mission triggered a wave of skepticism, plus hot takes on feminism, fame and who gets to literally and figuratively take up space.

Supporters hailed it as a win for representation. Critics dismissed it as a billionaire’s vanity project featuring his girlfriend. The media and Hollywood are divided on whether this was a meaningful step forward for women in aerospace or was simply a high-altitude photo op engineered for headlines. Commentators questioned whether celebrity space tourism merits the language of social progress, and many questioned why this mission and specifically why now. Was this about gender equity—or about optics?

Yet amid the celebrity memes, viral clips and week of controversy, a key part of this story never quite made it into the frame. The true question isn’t just who went up, but who still isn’t being let in, and why? What does real progress toward space equity look like, and far away truly is it?

The reality is that representation at 65 miles above Earth means little if women still lack influence over who designs the rockets, controls the funding or sets the agenda for space exploration.

The Optics Of Blue Origin’s All-Female Flight

It is arguable that anytime six women are seen defying gravity—whether they’re aerospace engineers or Grammy winners—it shifts our collective vision of space beyond the generic default of a white man in a spacesuit.

It is also worth highlighting that Blue Origin’s casting call blended STEM with stardom, creating a rare Venn diagram moment where fans of daytime TV, TikTok and astrophysics all tuned in at once. Suddenly, Katy Perry fans are discovering Amanda Nguyen’s groundbreaking civil rights legislation. Viewers who tune in for Gayle King might now be researching Aisha Bowe, whose remarkable journey to the stratosphere began at Washtenaw Community College. Her story shows little girls across the country that routes to the stars can begin wherever they are.

What Blue Origin’s All-Female Flight Didn't Address

Yet while these six women and their supporters celebrated progress, the backlash revealed a deeper tension. That is that visibility alone does not equal power or progress. This mission positioned itself as a leap forward for women, without addressing the ground-level barriers that continue to keep women out of aerospace leadership, design, and decision-making.

The facts are that women still represent only 12% of all people who’ve been to space and just a quarter of aerospace leadership roles, according to Data USA. In engineering, they make up just 16.5% of the U.S. workforce; within aerospace engineering, that number drops closer to 13%. These disparities didn't appear overnight—they've been built over time.

The Historical Gaps Behind Blue Origin's All-Female Flight

Members of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs, also known as the "Mercury 13"), these seven ... More

The first woman in space was neither a career astronaut nor a pop star. She was Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet factory worker and parachutist who became a cosmonaut in 1963. She piloted a solo mission that orbited Earth 48 times—an incredible test of endurance and grit, and a historical feat for women everywhere, albeit motivated at the time not by optics, but Cold War geopolitics.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Mercury 13—a group of highly trained women who passed the same rigorous physical tests as their male counterparts in the 1960s—were never cleared for launch because of one undermining factor: gender. NASA’s infrastructure, leadership and funding pipelines weren’t designed to include them. When Sally Ride eventually became America’s first woman in space in 1983, she was met not just with awe but with predictable gendered scrutiny. Reporters asked if spaceflight might make her cry, and whether she planned to wear makeup on the shuttle. Meanwhile NASA queried if 100 tampons would suffice for six days.

Three decades later, progress remains patchy at best. In 2019, NASA had to delay a planned historic all-female spacewalk—not because they didn’t have qualified female astronauts, but because they didn’t have enough properly sized suits for women. "Make another suit," Hillary Clinton tweeted at the time, echoing the voices of many women exasperated not by a wardrobe glitch but by the blatant systemic oversight.

Marketing The Moment, Missing The Mission

There's nothing inherently wrong with marketing a moment. But when the message overshadows the mechanics of change, it risks becoming powerful in appearance and performative in impact.

Blue Origin brilliantly marketed the mission as a feel-good, feminist-flavored moment of uplift. But there has been little evidence of any commitment to women in space. The mission was not accompanied by announcements of new pipeline programs, research grants or initiatives to address gender disparities in aerospace leadership. Just six passengers, and a press strategy built for orbit.

A press storm that has in many ways further undermined the mission’s stated intent. While Amanda Nguyen and Aisha Bowe brought serious credentials, the lens didn’t focus on them. Instead, coverage skewed toward celebrity—Lauren Sánchez’s relationship with Jeff Bezos, Katy Perry’s skin hugging spacesuit and the reaction of Gayle King’s famous best friend Oprah Winfrey.

Blue Origin’s All-Female Flight: Balancing Visibility And Real Change

So while there is power in visibility—especially in an industry where women have long been excluded—only when it comes with accessibility can it lead to change. While spaceflight remains one of humanity’s boldest frontiers, if we want a truly equitable future on earth and beyond, we can't build it on branding alone.

If space companies want to prove they’re serious about inclusion, we need more than visibility. We need structural change. Power not just to take part, but to design and to lead. The opportunity to decide who’s in the cockpit, who’s in the control room and who takes flight. Only then will women know we’ve truly taken off.