Katy Perry is exactly the kind of celebrity to go to space.
And then she traveled to the edge of space, where she gazed down at the blue marble before her and did the thing she’s been doing since she was a child at her parents’ Pentecostal church: She sang from her heart, about the bounty before her eyes. To paraphrase: She thought to herself / what a wonderful world. She was in the air for 10 minutes and 21 seconds total, and when she landed back on Earth, she kissed the ground like she’d been lost at sea for months. Afterward, when a reporter asked her how she felt about being “officially an astronaut,” Perry said that the experience showed her “how much love you have to give and how loved you are.”
People have been finding this extremely funny. They’ve been mocking her for not being up there long enough, and for being too solemn about the experience, and for reportedly studying string theory to prepare for it. “What an incredibly dumb woman,” someone wrote on X. “As a woman I’m annoyed. As an engineer I’m disgusted.” The fast-food company Wendy’s, of all entities, asked, “Can we send her back”?
The critics have a point. I’ve spent longer waiting for the subway than Perry was up in space. String theory is probably not a necessary prerequisite for sitting in a chair for a few minutes. Space tourism is, at best, folly—silly, spectacularly wasteful, pointless by definition.
