The ladies of Blue Origin are standing up for their historic space flight.
Hours before takeoff on Monday morning, the all-female crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard 31 — including Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez — sat down with “CBS Mornings” and addressed the criticism of their space journey.
“There’s always positive and negative, always,” said Sanchez, 55, who is engaged to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
“And Blue Origin’s mission is for the benefit of Earth,” she noted. “You should go walk around and ask anyone who works here how they feel about this mission. I think you’ll get choked up.”
“And so to me, I think it’s just a little misunderstood,” Sanchez continued. “Especially for all of the people that make this flight possible, to make it safe.”
King, 70, similarly defended the space flight and said it was helping, not hurting, the planet.
“Many people think that if you’re devoting resources you’re taking away things from Earth. It isn’t an either or. It’s a both and,” she explained. “And what happens in space also benefits what’s happening on Earth.”
“Listen, this wasn’t my dream growing up,” the “CBS Mornings” anchor admitted. “But if it was my dream I wouldn’t be able to see anybody that looked like me. Either, certainly a person of color or a female. That would not have been possible.”
King added, “So now that we are the first female crew, I know we are not going to be the last. And I just think it opens doors to innovation and imagination.”
Sanchez, King and Perry, 40, were joined by former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn for Monday’s flight.
The group wore matching blue space suits onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard 31, which launched at 9:30 a.m. from the company’s West Texas base.
The trip lasted around 11 minutes, and it was the first all-female space trip since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova‘s solo flight in 1963.
Both King and Perry kissed the ground when they returned to Earth.
King’s BFF Oprah Winfrey was at the scene and cried during takeoff. Perry’s fiancé, Orlando Bloom, and their daughter, Daisy Dove, 4, were also there. Bezos, 61, was the first person to greet the women after they landed.
Perry, who sang “What a Wonderful World” in space, told a reporter she felt “super connected to love” after the flight.
“This is all for the benefit of Earth,” the singer added. “I wanted to model courage and worthiness and fearlessness.”
King told CBS before the launch that she was “nervous but also very excited.”
After landing, the journalist described the journey as “a bona fide freakin’ flight.”
“I am so proud of me right now,” King added.
