Why the Blue Origin all-woman mission fell flat.

There’s nothing more awe-inspiring than outer space. It’s the final frontier. It’s shrouded in endless mystery and phenomena we’ve yet to understand. It’s really, really big. And, for decades, this awe has united entire nations around its exploration: watching fateful launches live on television, huddling around laptops to see the first video footage of Mars.

But the public interest in space has waned in the past few decades. Many believe that after winning the race to the moon, the stakes didn’t feel as high. Some people believe it’s a crisis of communications, highlighting how NASA has failed to maintain the same level of intrigue since the success of Apollo 11 in 1969. Or perhaps, since we can now follow astronauts on TikTok and stream rover footage on YouTube, the awe has been dulled due to its relative accessibility. 

Nevertheless, a study from 2023 found that the vast majority of Americans believe in the power and potential of NASA, and that scientific resources should be the primary focus: 60% of respondents said that monitoring asteroids and other objects that could potentially hit the Earth was a top priority, while 50% said monitoring “key parts” of the Earth’s climate. Only 12% of respondents are concerned with sending humans to the Moon, and 11% to Mars.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Blue Origin’s all-woman mission last week fell flat. It was marketed to the people as something that should elicit awe and joy when we’ve clearly shown otherwise. And, more urgently, the marketing strategy was just bad. In some ways, it felt like a campaign from 2013, when Lean In was on the New York Times bestseller list and #Girlboss was trending on Twitter. But it also felt devoid of the “make a seat at the table,” language, too. In an interview with Elle, Katy Perry expressed that they’d bring the “ass to astronaut,” which is the most vapid way to express enthusiasm for traveling to outer space for fun.

A decade later, we’re reckoning with a new definition of womanhood. We’ve been hit by a swift reduction in our reproductive rights, sidelined because of attacks against affirmative action and DEI, and left grappling with the rise of toxic masculinity. Parents and caretakers who identify as women are navigating caring for their children in an increasingly hostile and exclusionary administration. And the increasing attacks on trans people, particularly trans women, are further excluding us all from equitable access and opportunity. This, paired with the rise of trad wives and other conservative positions on womanhood have made it a tender, tested thing; one full of a level of nuance, emotion and depth that this stunt deeply lacked. 

How are we supposed to feel enthralled about women in space when the federal government keeps deleting stories of women military leaders and pilots? When DEI has been blamed for plane crashes? Many of us would choose clean drinking water for our kids and air conditioners for their classrooms before celebrating a wasteful use of resources for an atmospheric field trip. Our problems will still be right here when we land. It seems like across the political spectrum, this marketing campaign didn’t work. The Free Press likened it to a bachelorette party. Evie, a conservative-leaning magazine for women, hasn’t mentioned the stunt at all.

Perhaps this marketing campaign wasn’t for the everyday people. Blue Origin is providing commercial travel to space to the general public; you can fill out a form to secure a seat now (as long as you have that $150,000 deposit). The campaign didn’t have to work with everyone, just those who have the funds, who want to take a quick trip in space, bring their own artifacts, and make videos to show their friends from above the Earth’s atmosphere. There’s no one else offering this service, so any marketing campaign would be sufficient for those willing to pay. Ironically, the most prominent celebrity voices in favor of the stunt were billionaires Oprah (who published an article in defense of her friend in her magazine) and Kim Kardashian. The same research study mentioned above noted that 55% of U.S. adults expect that people will routinely travel in space as tourists in the next 50 years, but only 35% say they would be interested in going along for the ride.

But there’s value in campaigns like this working for us. Public sentiment on space travel will become increasingly important, especially as the Trump administration plans to slash NASA’s science budget for the fiscal year 2026 in half, threatening the livelihood of climate science research. At the same time, the federal government has re-prioritized sending people to the Moon, a decision Trump implemented during his first presidency that the Biden administration retained, and contracted private corporations like Blue Origin and SpaceX to fuel it. These decisions are the inverse of the priorities of the American people, and reflects a broader trend of how the government has been choosing the needs of its partners before the needs of the people.

These private companies need public dollars to achieve their goals – including their hopes to scale their own commercial flights. That means that for this to work, the government will have to cultivate awe – not just for space exploration, but the billionaires that now govern it. It doesn’t help that Bezos and Musk, the new faces of space exploration that own Blue Origin and SpaceX, respectively, aren’t exactly media darlings. We deserve to be treated as active investors in this endeavor, not just people in the audience. And do that, it’ll take a lot more than choosing people for campaigns only for their celebrity, race, and womanhood, identities that are exploited, rather than protected, in this anti-woke era.

I think strategists sincerely hoped that the campaign would help the American people feel more comfortable with commercial space travel. Instead, it showcased how carelessly this concept will be unrolled. Let this radicalize you instead of leading to apathy. Whether you’re indifferent or enthused, how you choose to respond will influence where we go from here. Will we root ourselves in the awe and wonder of finding a way to live sustainably on this Earth and the stars we inhabit? Or aligning ourselves with the spectacle of treating space like our personal backyard? Campaigns don’t choose how we cultivate our awe, or how it inspires us to take action. Root into bigger, more radical possibilities for how we take up space in this galaxy.

Women went to space, but men still want to own It. The all-female Blue Origin flight was a distraction. In reality, male billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk see the cosmos as their domain. Bloomberg >

Making space for women: Gender, diversity and outer space. Major gender gaps exist everywhere from the space agencies themselves to space manufacturing, aerospace engineering, space force and space command workforces. UN Women >

'End time s--t': Blue Origin's all-women space flight out of Texas draws criticism. The space tourism venture's historic flight has drawn criticism for being wasteful and tone deaf. Chron >

• Follow the work of The Planetary Soiety to learn more about space and public policy.

• Support organizations like Space4Girls, Zonta and the Proctor Foundation providing opportunities for marginalized communities in space.