Respectfully, this wasn’t a space mission. It was a marketing stunt. Frankly, calling these space tourists “astronauts” is like calling someone a Green Beret for spending an afternoon playing paintball. Real astronauts train for years, risk their lives, and expand human knowledge. These joyrides just inflate egos and Instagram feeds.
I’m just a little bothered that these posing women will get far more attention than pioneering women. Peggy Whitson lived in space. Mae Jemison did science there. Sunita Williams ran a damn marathon.
By contrast, these celebrities took a 10-minute joyride on a phallic rocket. Hell, some roller coasters take more guts, and deliver more thrills, than these vanity flights.
The only redeeming feature is that Gayle King had the presence of mind to balk at being called an astronaut. That stands in stark contrast to the “pioneering” male space tourists like her patron, Jeff Bezos, and his billionaire rival, Richard Branson. After all, they even lobbied to get pinned with “NASA wings” — so they could call themselves astronauts.
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