Oh, please—let’s all take a moment to applaud the brave sisterhood of high-altitude influencers who bravely boarded their glittery space Uber for a ten-minute selfie in the stratosphere. Because obviously, slipping into a pressurized designer jumpsuit and sipping zero-gravity champagne for the ’Gram is exactly the same as pioneering mankind’s journey into the void of space.
Let’s compare: real astronauts—yes, the ones with PhDs, years of flight training, and titanium guts—have actually died pushing the boundaries of science and human potential. Remember them?
- Gus Grissom,
- Ed White,
- Roger Chaffee —perished in the tragic Apollo 1 launchpad fire.
- Dick Scobee,
- Michael J. Smith,
- Ronald McNair,
- Ellison Onizuka,
- Judith Resnik,
- Gregory Jarvis,
- Christa McAuliffe —killed during the Challenger explosion in 1986.
- Rick Husband,
- William McCool,
- Michael P. Anderson,
- Ilan Ramon,
- Kalpana Chawla,
- David M. Brown,
- Laurel B. Clark —who died aboard the Columbia in 2003 during reentry.
These were genuine heroes who didn’t just “go to space”—they earned it. They didn’t play dress-up and call it “breaking barriers.” They didn’t go up for bragging rights; they went up for all of us.
But sure, let’s act like a 12-minute space tourism jaunt—complete with full makeup, zero training, and likely a branded sponsorship—is the new face of “exploration.” Spoiler alert: it’s not the future of science. It’s the future of Instagram. And unlike the fallen astronauts, these women risked nothing but a bad hair day and a malfunctioning filter. Bravo, ladies. Truly… brave.
