Blue Origin plans an all-female area flight—however astronaut memoirs reveal the price of being distinctive

For the primary time since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963, a spacecraft will enter orbit with solely ladies aboard. Blue Origin’s all-female space flight crew, which incorporates popstar Katy Perry, is ready to take off this spring.

Jeff Bezos’ crew is assembled from profitable and well-known ladies, additionally together with tv presenter Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and journalist Lauren Sanchez. Promotional material for the flight, claims that Perry “hopes her journey encourages her daughter and others to achieve for the celebs, actually and figuratively.”

The glamorous optics of this spaceflight are supposedly designed to encourage ladies to attempt for his or her goals. The shiny narrative tells others that they are often identical to these extraordinary ladies. But, behind this aspirational preferrred, there’s a extra problematic story relating to profitable ladies in science and their roles in public.

My Ph.D. analysis examines memoirs written by ladies astronauts. They assemble interesting depictions of girls who’re profitable and distinctive. However in observe their success tales are nigh on unattainable for abnormal ladies to emulate.

That is epitomized in astronaut Catherine Coleman’s response to sporting a spacesuit designed for males. In her 2024 memoir, she wrote: “More often than not, I took the method that if the swimsuit did not match, I might merely put on it anyway—and put on it properly. Put on it higher than anybody anticipated.”

As this quote exhibits, ladies who’ve traveled to area are inclined to assemble themselves as having labored exceptionally exhausting to disclaim the norms of what’s anticipated of them and to offset systemic biases.

From the outset of her memoir, Coleman emphasizes that she’s at all times needed to be an “exception” from the remainder of humanity, which feels alienating. However she additionally persistently means that her life was destined to be this fashion. “Area felt like dwelling to me,” she says, tacitly acknowledging that she was at all times meant to be there.

Jemison, who was the primary African American girl in area, additionally expresses this sense of future in her 2001 memoir. “I perched quietly, searching of the home windows on the flight deck,” she writes. “Unusual, however I at all times knew I might be right here. Trying down and throughout me, seeing Earth, the moon, and the celebs, I simply felt like I belonged.”

The crew set to board the Blue Origin flight need to be storytellers in the identical approach that girls astronauts are of their memoirs. However the well-known members of its crew are a reminder that tough work is just a part of this specific story—fortune and privilege additionally play a component.

Eileen Collins was the primary girl to pilot and command an area shuttle. In her 2021 memoir, she particulars the pressures and expectations of working in a male-dominated subject. She discovered that it exacerbated already tough decision-making and the necessity to carry out crucial actions appropriately.

When she says “present and future ladies pilots are relying on me to do an ideal job up right here,” she exemplifies the cruel scrutiny that girls astronauts are sometimes topic to when they’re the primary of their gender.

Behind the duvet

The difficulty with fashionable scientific memoirs is that they’re persistently marketed as trustworthy and truthful works. These books promise to disclose who the astronaut truly is, however they’re, in actual fact, rigorously curated pictures of the ladies they painting.

So whereas they intend to inspire and encourage others, the memoirs do not at all times achieve this in a very trustworthy approach. This attracts a parallel with the Blue Origin flight.

Many of those narratives search to rewrite previous stereotypes of scientists whereas additionally functioning as a response to the modern urge for food for memoirs that reveal the inside emotional world of their topics. For instance, Kathryn Sullivan discusses “wrestling” with visceral “pangs” of ache at being unable to launch her mission on account of technical points.

This idea displays why there’s a fevered public expectation that the Blue Origin flight crew will embark on a perspective-shifting journey and expertise “deep emotions from space.“

Whereas current coverage surrounding the launch frames it as a celebration of collective development, the folks comprising this spaceflight crew don’t mirror most ladies.

If the Blue Origin mission is to be a lodestar for a common feminist narrative, utilizing ladies’s spaceflight as a measure of progress, then it must also be thought of in tandem with the incongruities and uniqueness of girls’s experiences. Finally, it is very important transfer away from narratives that inform us that science, spaceflight and success are solely synonymous with fame and exceptionalism.

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