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

Via Blue Origin

This week, a 10-minute rocket ride became a multi-day headline. Katy Perry reportedly sang ‘Its a wonderful world,’ Gayle King beamed in zero gravity, and Lauren Sánchez—pilot, philanthropist, and Jeff Bezos’s partner—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 artist-entrepreneur Lina Valentina. Together, they soared 65 miles above Earth and landed before most people could finish their morning coffee.

It was America’s first all-female space crew in more than 60 years of human spaceflight, and created an internet firestorm. A rocket launch that immediately became a cultural flashpoint. Packaged as empowering, groundbreaking, and long overdue, the mission flooded social media feeds and triggered a wave of celebration, skepticism, and 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. Commentators questioned whether celebrity space tourism merits the language of social progress. Many have questioned why this mission and why now. Was it about gender equity—or about optics?

But by fixating on tabloid sensationalism, we risk overlooking the true fundamental issues at stake. The critical question here is what and who does genuine progress toward space equity look like, and how far are we from achieving it? Could this flight actually lead to a meaningful step forward for women in aerospace, or was it a high-altitude photo op designed to generate headlines? The reality is representation at 65 miles up means little if women continue to have little or no power over who builds the rockets, allocates the funding, or decide which missions matter.

The Symbolism of Blue Origin’s All-Female Flight

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: aka a white man in a spacesuit.

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. 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 anywhere.

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

The backlash here centers on just what representation really means. 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. Women still represent only 12% of all people who’ve been to space and just a quarter of aerospace leadership roles. In engineering, women 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 women who once aspired to fly into space stand outside Launch Pad 39B near the Space Shuttle Discovery in this photograph from 1995. The so-called Mercury 13 was a group of women who trained to become astronauts for America’s first human spaceflight pr

Nasa

The first woman in space was neither a careered 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—a feat of endurance and grit, a feat for women everywhere, motivated not by optics but by 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 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.

Hilary Clinton Tweets NASA 2019

Hilary Clinton X

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.

VAN HORN, TEXAS – APRIL 14: Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket carrying astronauts Aisha Bowe, Amanda … More Nguyn, Kerianne Flynn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, and Lauren Sánchez lifts off from Launch Site One on April 14, 2025 in Van Horn, Texas. Blue Origin’s Mission NS-31 is the first all-female astronaut crew since 1963. (Photo by Justin Hamel/Getty Images)

Getty Images

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 to take part, to design and to lead. 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.