Six women – including the pop star Katy Perry and morning TV host Gayle King – are set to launch into space from a private Texas ranch on Monday morning on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur.
The women, who also include Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sánchez, will make the trip to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – and float about, weightlessly, in the rocket’s capsule for three minutes before returning to earth.
Perry, 40, said last week she was listening to an audiobook of Cosmos by Carl Sagan and reading a book on string theory in preparation for the ride.
“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars,” she told the Associated Press. “We are all made of stardust, and we all come from the stars.”
The pop star also said that she planned to channel “that feminine divine that I was born with” to prepare for the new experience.
Prior to liftoff, King – who co-hosts CBS Mornings – said she was approaching the rocket trip with trepidation. “I still get very uncomfortable when people say ‘astronaut’,” she said. “I in no means feel like an astronaut. They said: ‘But, Gayle, if you go to space, you’re an astronaut.”
The pair, along with former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn, will travel as the guests of Sánchez, who is set to marry Bezos this summer in Venice.
They are expected to launch at about 8.30am local time (9.30am ET and 13.30 GMT) in a craft that is fully automated. The ladies will not be required to do anything except enjoy the propulsion, a few minutes of zero gravity, and of course take in the view.
The Blue Origin rocket will rise vertically before the crew capsule detaches mid-flight, later falling back to the ground slowed by parachutes and a retro rocket.
The flight will be the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program, which has flown 52 people, including repeat astronauts, about the Kármán line.
Some critics have questioned whether the all-female trip is as a moment of feminist progress since it comes as promotion for Bezos’s space tourism business that, in turn, is the marketing arm of Blue Origin’s commercial launch program.
The US actor Olivia Munn called the trip “a bit gluttonous” during a guest hosting appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends on CBS rival NBC.
“I know this is not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” Munn said. “What are you guys going to do up in space?”
