Why Katy Perry’s space flight was one giant flop for mankind

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There is some­thing very unset­tling about know­ing that Katy Per­ry has been to (the edge of) space. It wouldn’t have been good if any oth­er pop star had board­ed Jeff Bezos’ rock­et in an elab­o­rate mar­ket­ing stunt for his space tech com­pa­ny – excuse me, ​“his­toric all-woman sub­or­bital mis­sion” – but at least if it was Lady Gaga or not­ed atom­ic bomb buff Car­di B or some­thing it would have felt less incon­gru­ous. As it stands, the per­son respon­si­ble for ​‘Women’s World’ becom­ing the first artist ever to sing in space feels like a ter­ri­ble omen for the future. Not that we were doing par­tic­u­lar­ly well on that front in any case, but this cer­tain­ly has not helped.

To recap: Per­ry was blast­ed into (the edge of) space along­side jour­nal­ist Gayle King, film pro­duc­er Keri­anne Fly­nn, for­mer NASA aero­space engi­neer Aisha Bowe, bioas­tro­nau­tics researcher / civ­il rights activist Aman­da Nguyen, and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lau­ren Sánchez. The whole thing played out like a Love Island chal­lenge set 100 years in the future. They each rang a mas­sive bell before board­ing the shut­tle, like the influ­encer-real­tors do on Sell­ing Sun­set when they close a deal, while being cheered on by a group of close acquain­tances includ­ing Oprah, Kris Jen­ner, and Khloe Kar­dashi­an. Sánchez began organ­is­ing their out­fits five months in advance and called on Oscar De La Renta’s design­ers to whip up a cobalt blue kick-flare jump­suit to ​“bring a lit­tle spice to space” (one ear­ly idea includ­ed adding a corset to cinch the waist, but sad­ly that would have made move­ment in zero grav­i­ty large­ly impos­si­ble). Bowe took her blow-dry for a test run, telling Elle: ​“I sky­dived in Dubai with sim­i­lar hair to make sure I would be good.” After the mis­sion was com­plete, Cos­mopoli­tan ran with the head­line: ​“This £9.99 set­ting spray is what kept Katy Per­ry’s glam make­up intact when blast­ing through out­er space.”

As well as becom­ing the first artist to sing in space (she sang Louis Armstrong’s ​‘What A Won­der­ful World’ – hell), Per­ry also became the first pop star to pro­mote her con­cert in space when she held up a but­ter­fly-shaped piece of paper to the cam­eras inside the shut­tle with her new setlist writ­ten on it. When they returned to Earth after a grand total of 11 min­utes, she kissed the ground like a lib­er­at­ed pris­on­er of war.

• Read next: Don­ald Trump says that ​“every­thing is com­put­er” – does he have a point?

The mis­sion received hours of rolling news cov­er­age and was almost uni­ver­sal­ly despised. From left-wing pun­dits, to right-wing con­spir­a­cy YouTu­bers, to nor­mal peo­ple who aren’t online eight hours a day, the gen­er­al take-away was some­thing to the effect of: ​‘it’s a bit fuck­ing rich for a tech bil­lion­aire to send a team of women on a pri­vate­ly fund­ed space trip and try to sell it as some sort of fem­i­nist ​“win” when wealth inequal­i­ty is hit­ting pre-fall of Rome lev­els and pover­ty, which dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects women, is ram­pant. Do they think we’re fuck­ing stu­pid?’ To which the answer is, of course, yes. 

It’s a shame for Bowe and Nguyen, who by all accounts had good cause to be involved in the first all-female space flight since 1963 and whose pres­ence actu­al­ly means some­thing. Beyond that the whole thing basi­cal­ly chalks up to a very expen­sive advert for Bezos’ space tech com­pa­ny Blue Ori­gin, which aims to turn the moon into a mas­sive Ama­zon Ware­house (or, in its own words: ​“envi­sion a future where mil­lions of peo­ple will live and work in space with a sin­gle-mind­ed pur­pose: to restore and sus­tain Earth”). On the upside Bezos fell over while rush­ing to greet his wife-to-be upon her return, which was very embar­rass­ing for him.

While watch­ing some of the crew reflect on the ​“phe­nom­e­nal dream” expe­ri­ence and gush­ing about how Bezos is ​“build­ing the road to space,” I was remind­ed of what William Shat­ner wrote about his own trip to space in his book Bold­ly Go: Reflec­tions on a Life of Awe and Won­der. After play­ing a Starfleet cap­tain on TV for decades, Shat­ner final­ly jour­neyed into the final fron­tier on a Blue Ori­gin rock­et in 2021, becom­ing, at age 90, the old­est per­son to trav­el to space at the time. He’d expect­ed to feel ​“the ulti­mate cathar­sis of that con­nec­tion I had been look­ing for between all liv­ing things.” When he got up there and looked down at the Earth, though, he found the opposite.

“I dis­cov­ered that the beau­ty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leav­ing that behind made my con­nec­tion to our tiny plan­et even more pro­found,” he writes. ​“It was among the strongest feel­ings of grief I have ever encoun­tered. The con­trast between the vicious cold­ness of space and the warm nur­tur­ing of Earth below filled me with over­whelm­ing sad­ness. Every day, we are con­front­ed with the knowl­edge of fur­ther destruc­tion of Earth at our hands: the extinc­tion of ani­mal species, of flo­ra and fau­na … things that took five bil­lion years to evolve, and sud­den­ly we will nev­er see them again because of the inter­fer­ence of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was sup­posed to be a cel­e­bra­tion; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

• Read next: Inside the strange world of space colonisation

No such insight from the girl­boss rock­et launch, unfor­tu­nate­ly. I’m not say­ing this is a direct result of the hubris of the mis­sion, but­ter­fly effect style, but a week lat­er Pope Fran­cis, the most pro­gres­sive leader the Catholic Church has ever had, died hours after meet­ing JD Vance. A pow­er out­age took out a mas­sive chunk of con­ti­nen­tal Europe, plung­ing inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny What­sApp groups into dis­ar­ray. And CNN announced that Gwyneth Pal­trow has start­ed eat­ing carbs and cheese again. All clear apoc­a­lypse indicators. 

Mean­while, Katy Per­ry is strug­gling to fill half the seats on her cur­rent tour – the one she made his­to­ry pro­mot­ing in (the edge of) space, yes – after releas­ing an album of bizarre Hillary Clin­ton-era fem­i­nist songs in 2024 that was the worst-reviewed of her career and among the most panned albums of the decade. It’s a gen­uine­ly shock­ing turn from some­one who defined the pop land­scape for so much of the late 2000s and ear­ly 2010s – her bot­tom­less brunch bangers and car­toon­ish eccen­tric­i­ty now swapped for emp­ty polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing and the wide, dead eyes of some­one who went to Burn­ing Man and nev­er spir­i­tu­al­ly returned. All things con­sid­ered, maybe orbit wasn’t the worst place for her after all. At least in space, no one can hear you flop.

Emma Gar­land is a free­lance writer and for­mer dig­i­tal edi­tor of Huck. Fol­low her on Bluesky.

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