I am broadly of the view that Katy Perry should do whatever she likes, and wear whatever she likes, and if she wants to be shot into space for no obvious purpose looking like one of Charlie’s Angels, then that falls squarely into those categories. So why am I so bothered by Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which has just made a suborbital flight to the edge of space and back? OK, it’s partly the outfits (see Angels, Charlie’s, above), but it’s mainly the flight manifest: Perry joined Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s fiancee; Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights activist; CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; film producer Kerianne Flynn and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe. I cannot help but notice that only two of these women had anything to do with astronauting (Nguyen studied astrophysics and interned at Nasa before becoming an activist).
Obviously it’s very staid and 20th century to think that only experts should be allowed in space – yet their absence did suggest the primary purpose of the trip to be tourism rather than research. Which in turn suggests that this was a dumb waste of money. Which itself makes you wonder just how many of the world’s problems would have to have been solved before space tourism would look like a worthwhile enterprise – hard to put a number on it, but significantly more than have been solved today.
Besides Bowe, the others were selected mainly for their contributions to culture – and again, yay Katy Perry – but also, presumably, because they’re all female. It’s framed as a feminist statement, and I guess we’re supposed to rejoice that space is no longer pale, male and stale. But something about the randomness of the guest list, coupled with the fact that they all have such nice hair, just … I don’t know … gives an impression of the gender that’s a bit incomplete. It may be one small step for some women; it does not feel like a giant leap for womankind.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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