Blue Origin launches first all-female crew in tourism space rocket

Bengaluru — Pop star Katy Perry and five other women launched into space on a Blue Origin rocket and successfully returned to Earth on Monday, marking the first all-female space flight in more than 60 years.

The crew lifted off from West Texas at 9.31am ET (1.31pm GMT) and travelled to the edge of space, where they experienced a brief period of weightlessness before returning to Earth in a flight lasting about 11 minutes, according to a live broadcast by Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The space flight was a high-profile success for Bezos’ New Shepard launch vehicle, which has been developed for space tourism.

The six-person crew also included Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, CBS host Gayle King, former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, scientist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

King said that when the crew returned to their seats after weightlessness, Perry sang the Louis Armstrong song What a Wonderful World.

“I feel super connected to love,” Katy Perry said after landing back on Earth.

Perry was holding a daisy, a flower she took into space, to remind her of her daughter, Daisy.

Among celebrities in attendance at the launch pad were a tearful Oprah Winfrey, a close friend of King, and show business personalities Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.

It was the first all-female space flight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman in space — orbited Earth during a nearly three-day solo flight in 1963.

Blue Origin does not disclose the average cost of a seat on one of its rockets. On its website, the company says potential passengers have to pay $150,000 in the form of a refundable deposit to start the “order process.”

In 2021, the company revealed the highest bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft was $28m. That same year, Star Trek actor William Shatner flew free of charge as a guest of Blue Origin.

In 2018, Reuters reported the company was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for the ride.

Blue Origin says on its website it aims to radically reduce the cost of access to space, with its rockets designed for reusability.

Loizos Heracleous, a professor of strategy and organisation at Warwick Business School in Britain, estimates each launch of the New Shepard costs between $1m and $3m.

“Even ignoring development cost, there are six seats so each passenger would have to pay about half a million USD for this to be a financially viable ongoing business,” Heracleous said. “It will take a long time before space tourism can be a financially sustainable business available to the public at large.”

Reuters