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On Monday, an all-female crew will head to space for the first time since 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova manned a solo spaceflight. This time, things look a little different. This crew is going up in a suborbital rocket made by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company, and notable names on the flight include Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sánchez; Katy Perry; and Gayle King. So what exactly are they doing? Also, why? Great questions. Here are all the answers.
When is the launch scheduled to happen?
The New Shepard, the rocket taking the women on their journey, is set for liftoff on Monday, April 14, at 8:30 a.m. CDT. They’ll be taking off from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site. If you are on the West Coast, they will probably go up and come down before you even wake up. Which brings us to our next question.
How long will they be up there?
Eleven minutes. That’s actually just how long the entire trip is from start to finish. According to the Elle cover story the women did to promote their endeavor, they will only be experiencing weightlessness for about four minutes before the ship brings them back down to Earth. Just like when Bezos himself took this flight a few years ago, they will not actually be going into orbit.
Who is going on the flight?
In addition to Sánchez (the de facto leader of the crew), Perry, and King, three other women are going with them: Aisha Bowe, a former rocket scientist; Amanda Nguyen, an activist focused on victims of sexual assault; and film producer Kerianne Flynn. The women all seem pretty hyped, except for King, who keeps telling the press how nervous she is. The CBS Mornings host told Elle that her initial response to being asked was a firm “No,” but she mustered up the courage anyway. “I haven’t felt like this since childbirth, really,” she said. “Because I knew childbirth was going to hurt. But it’s also stepping out of your comfort zone.”
How dangerous is this?
Obviously, there is some level of risk when you get shot up 65 miles above the ground. But in the grand scheme of space travel, this is probably one of the least risky things you can do. This will be the 11th (wo)manned trip for Blue Origin, and again, it’s only 11 minutes long.
And who is driving?
It’s not Perry, if that’s what you’re wondering. The New Shepard controls itself and runs on a program, so none of the girls will be making contact with any knobs or buttons. The Blue Origin team will be monitoring the flight from the ground, and I guess in the worst-case scenario it’s good that they’ll have a rocket scientist with them?
Will they be in glam?
Usually, this would be considered a sexist question, but these women are actually really proud of the fact that they’ll be factoring hair and makeup into their preflight checklist. In their Elle story, a whole section was devoted to the looks they’ll be pulling in space. “Who would not get glam before the flight?” Sánchez asked, prompting Perry to say, “Space is going to finally be glam.” Some might argue that space has always been glam, but that’s a fight for a different day. Perry also said that she and her crewmates were going to “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
Nguyen is taking the matter very seriously, telling the magazine, “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that. This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.” For too long, space has been dominated by uggos!
