I am broadly of the view that Katy Perry ought to do no matter she likes, and put on no matter she likes, and if she needs to be shot into area for no apparent objective wanting like one among Charlie’s Angels, then that falls squarely into these classes. So why am I so bothered by Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which has simply made a suborbital flight to the sting of area and again? OK, it’s partly the outfits (see Angels, Charlie’s, above), nevertheless it’s primarily the flight manifest: Perry joined Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s fiancee; Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights activist; CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; movie producer Kerianne Flynn and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe. I can’t assist however discover that solely two of those girls had something to do with astronauting (Nguyen studied astrophysics and interned at Nasa earlier than changing into an activist).
Clearly it’s very staid and twentieth century to suppose that solely specialists ought to be allowed in area – but their absence did recommend the first objective of the journey to be tourism quite than analysis. Which in flip means that this was a dumb waste of cash. Which itself makes you marvel simply how most of the world’s issues must have been solved earlier than area tourism would seem like a worthwhile enterprise – exhausting to place a quantity on it, however considerably greater than have been solved at present.
Apart from Bowe, the others have been chosen primarily for his or her contributions to tradition – and once more, yay Katy Perry – but additionally, presumably, as a result of they’re all feminine. It’s framed as a feminist assertion, and I suppose we’re speculated to rejoice that area is not pale, male and off. However one thing concerning the randomness of the visitor record, coupled with the truth that all of them have such good hair, simply … I don’t know … provides an impression of the gender that’s a bit incomplete. It could be one small step for some girls; it doesn’t really feel like a large leap for womankind.
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