Blue Origin (NOT Space X!) shot singer Katy Perry into space today—or yesterday, I really don’t care— and unfortunately, she will be coming back, or is she back already? (See previous comment.)
There are a lot of videos up now with pop star Perry making moronic observations about her trip. She will be accompanies by a slightly less flagrant idiot and a far less influential one, Gayle King, Oprah’s <cough> galpal. (Althouse features another one of Katy’s deep thoughts videos.)
Why are we—anyone— sending celebrity idiots into space? All this does is encourage weak minds to consider them worth listening to when they are not. There must be easily a million Americans whose journey “to the stars” would convey more long and short term benefits on our society.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, I am not sure about what exactly the ethical issue is here. Is it the fact of space travel? Or is it that Katy Perry is being Katy Perry in her commentary?
Ick, rather than ethics, perhaps. Or an assertion that “space tourism” is inherently unethical, as a waste of resources and opportunity. Or that this is a particularly irresponsible example of conspicuous consumption. Or the cognitive dissonance offense of rendering an importsnta field of science trivial and ridiculous by a negative association. Take your pick…
As a former employee of Mr. Bezos’s space venture I’m going to defend space tourism as ethical – in particular I helped enable some of the critical last-resort safety features for the New Shepard vehicle – so you can mark me as partially responsible for this PR stunt (gone horribly wrong, looking with engineer’s eyes, now from the outside).
New Shepard was built with three main objectives in mind:
Now, whether Blue Origin has been successful on these goals, or the broader strategic goal of building an operating an orbital vehicle that can compete with SpaceX is debatable, but there is nothing inherently unethical on taking the glorified carnival ride approach to developing a first space vehicle when it is a stepping stone to building a more powerful one on top of the acquired knowledge and at least some of the infrastructure.
Can Blue compete with SpaceX? Uard to tell right now. They are still behind, but I’m rooting for my old coworkers and for some old-fashioned all-American capitalist competition.
The point, Jack, is that for a while there, SpaceX managed to place Gayle King farther away from me than she had ever been in all my life, and at no expense to myself.
Ha! Well said!
“Why are we—anyone— sending celebrity idiots into space?”
We aren’t. Blue Origin is, and they are because they like the money.
Sure, the price seems excessive to us, an estimated $20 to $50 million, but that is because we are not the centibillionnaire raking in the dough nor the multi-millionnaire celebrity paying for the experience. In principle, it is no different an expensive dinner at a prestigious restaurant — excessive to some, not so much to the buyer.
But at this point, HJ, anything Musk is automatically seen as quasi-national. You are right of course: a rich idiot pays for the space tourism, and a fool and her money are soon parted. I guess, as I think of it, this is just branding and marketing for both the company and the customer.
I believe Blue Origin is run by Jeff Bezos, not Musk.
jvb
Yikes, how did I make THAT mistake?
I have a hard time keeping them all straight, too.
jvb
Why are we—anyone— sending celebrity idiots into space?
Because they can afford it and we can’t. I am reminded of scripture, when Judas chastises Jesus for letting a woman anoint his feet with expensive oil, saying that the oil could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus’ enigmatic reply that the poor will always be with us (yeah, no kidding, ask the poor what they think of this), but not he. Biblical scholarship on this exchange and how we are to use it in our own lives notwithstanding, the wealthy can always do what they want to do with their vast quantities of money, never thinking of how they COULD have the used that money in at least a less self-centered way. I mean, how many yachts do you really need, how much shiny jewelry, how many million-dollar golf trips are enough?
I miss understood what Space X was to be used for. I thought something educational with something of educational significance. Sad what the United States has became.
Jack should correct the post. Blue Origin is not Space X.
Thank you for correcting.
to be fair, the post didn’t mention Space X, just the tag. Which is GONE.
I’m reading this at the start of the post:
I never read my own headlines and first lines. Ugh. NOW it’s gone. ^%$#@!#^&*&^%$#@%*&^%!
It wasn’t Space X it was Blue Origin.
There’s an echo in here. 😂
Yup, I saw that after I posted my reply. It had been a few minutes since my browser had updated. Poop occurs.
Relevant scene permanently etched into my brain that comes to mine anyone says anything about an echo…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CahNAauFgys
You gotta watch what Kate said after the space flight…
When I looked back at the landing, I was really impressed that they rode the rocket back to earth, but then I saw that the crew capsule parachuted down separately.
Different flight profiles, of course, but even SpaceX’s crew capsules parachute down as far as I am aware.
However, they’ve just about perfected landing their Falcon 9 boosters for reuse, and even more amazingly catching the Spaceship booster stage back at the launch pad. SpaceX is still working on the Spaceship booster catcher, but with Falcon 9 it is now news when one of them doesn’t come back safely to earth.
Spam in a can. A monkey’s gonna make the first flight !
One of these days one of these missions is going to fail and we’re going to have five or six dead celebrities on our hands for no apparent reason. This is sheer idiocy.
It it’s the right celebrities, the tragedy will be considerably mitigated….
Yes. I couldn’t help thinking it was unfortunate they weren’t stranded up there for at least eight or nine months like the Biden administration’s poor guinea pigs were. Why bring Katie Perry back from outer space when that’s her comfort zone? I bet the vast majority of the Kardashians could fit into one of those ships. And then maybe the Biden syndicate? Lanny Davis?
You seem to imply that there would be a downside for everyone.
Silver Linings, Old Bill.
It is one small step for a women but a giant step backwards for feminism.
Watching this girls night out in space by those babes in sexy space suits, and watching their childlike wonder after their return is actually pretty charming and kind of comical. Now I need to reread some old DC and Marvel comics, space opera’s with female heroines with gigantic laser guns fighting off alien monsters.
They could have some other gigantic accoutrements as well. They probably already do.
I always get a chuckle when pulp comics show these accoutrements well protected by chain mail bikinis.
I doubt marketers can ever go wrong appealing to the twelve to … I honestly don’t know where it ends supposedly eighteen? … demographic. (Not that I’d ever take eighteen as the over.)
And now we are in adolescent fantasy territory anyway, what about the shape of the rocket, and landing capsule? I watched Megan Kelly yesterday, mentioning the phallic shape of the rocket and the boob shaped landing capsule.
When I was a Blue employee we had one of those rare sticking snowfalls in the Seattle area. Someone suggested we make a snow New Shepard in the parking lot, to which there was a reply that more or less said “With the unfortunate proportions of the rocket, once it starts melting down it will look just like a giant phallus next to where I park my car.”