The Debate Over Whether Katy Perry Is an Astronaut Rages On

Jeff Bezos recently sent a number of very wealthy women to the edge of space, in a goofy media spectacle that likely has Neil Armstrong turning over in his grave. The all-female Blue Origin space flight has inspired a lot of strong emotions from the internet, many of which have been directed at its most prominent crew member, Katy Perry.

Indeed, ever since the spaceflight touched down, the internet has been ablaze with a heated debate over whether the pop singer can be characterized as a real astronaut or not. The debate has reached absurd proportions, even impacting editors at Wikipedia, who broke into a discussion last week about whether they should classify the singer as an “astronaut” or not. Unequivocally, all of the editors decided the answer was “no.”

“I’m inclined to say no when one brief space trip alone isn’t very defining for her career,” said an editor called SNUGGUMS. “If there are others she embarks on in the future, then we could reassess the matter.”

Another editor, Ravensfire, said, “She’s a space tourist, it’s not something that should be in the lead or listed as an occupation.”

“The common understanding of what an astronaut/cosmonaut includes years of training and generally some type of mission,” said RCSCott91. “From the formal perspective of NASA, who more narrowly defined the term, Katy Perry would still not qualify.”

For whatever reason, America’s new Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, also decided to chime in last week. Duffy took to X on Thursday to give a very backhanded compliment to the recent space flight, and to let the participants know that they were very definitively not astronauts. “The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam,” Duffy wrote, “but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.”

It’s unclear why Duffy felt it was necessary to dunk on the Bezos-funded space party. Maybe Duffy, who has been busy cutting funding (or threatening to cut funding) to infrastructure and transportation projects in blue states, wanted an excuse to feel like a real government official.

Perry also somehow managed to get in a fight with Wendy’s (you know, the fast food restaurant), after the chain tweeted about the singer’s return from outer space, asking: “Can we send her back?” A source close to Perry subsequently told news outlets that the singer was owed an apology from the restaurant: “Wendy’s didn’t make a joke — they made a choice. Their recent posts on X aimed at Katy Perry were not only disrespectful but blatantly inappropriate.” The source continued: “This wasn’t harmless banter, this was a billion-dollar brand using its platform to publicly demean a woman.” Wendy’s subsequently refused to apologize.

God only knows why everybody has chosen to dogpile on Perry when there were half a dozen other women on the flight, though perhaps it had something to do with the singer’s decision to use the excursion as an opportunity to promote her upcoming world tour. While in space, Perry made a video in which she unveiled a piece of paper with the tour’s setlist on it. A source close to Perry has since told the media that she regrets “making a public spectacle” out of her trip to space.

It should be noted that there have been many real female astronauts over the years, whether or not you can call Bezos’ recent 10-minute excursion a real “all-female” space mission.

In an even stupider turn of events, the online rabble has also decided that—much like the original moon mission—the Blue Origin flight must have been faked. Much of the conspiratorial musings have centered around a video taken after the space pod landed back on Earth. Commenters said they thought the pod’s door had been opened from the inside and then quickly shut before Bezos opened it with a key. The internet’s “experts” claim this should have been impossible, though who’s to say whether they’re right or if it ever even happened.

The stakes for the Apollo flights were admittedly high (we were trying to prove we were better than Russia so that we could continue laying claim to the resources of the Third World), so it makes sense that the U.S. government would have faked them (I’m not saying they did, I’m just saying the justification was there). What the stakes of sending a pop singer to space are, I’m not quite sure, other than the continued relevance of a billionaire’s goofy space tourism business. Which is, you know, not actually that relevant to most people.