30-04-2025
Recent Suborbital Spaceflight Ridicule Omits A Key Thing: Space Suits
VAN HORN, TEXAS - DECEMBER 11: Blue Origin's New Shepard lifts off from the Launch Site One launch pad carrying Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan, Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, and four other civilians on December 11, 2021 near Van Horn, Texas. The six are riding aboard mission NS-19, the third human spaceflight for the company which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Photo by)
I've been watching fallout from the recent Blue Origin all-women's suborbital trip to space. Public reaction has generally been vicious. Most social media posts have called the flight a PR stunt for the rich. The six women, the coverage says, went up on what essentially was an 11-minute Disney joy ride, then came back only to call themselves "astronauts.'
The funniest social media post I've seen is a reporter greeting Katy Perry just after the pop star had exited the space capsule. "You're an astronaut now," said the correspondent. "How do you feel?" Perry's response, "Thank you very much." Then the clip quickly cuts to Jennifer Aniston on "Friends" saying that because she went to the zoo, she's now a koala bear.
All humor aside, what's missing from the coverage is any mention of space suits, other than the tight designer things the six women wore. I've been harping on the subject for a while, and this is the perfect time to revisit it. If there were a sudden depressurization in the capsule during flight, the women likely would have been dead within seconds. Blood boils above 58,000 feet, the Armstrong Line, and these folks went quite a bit higher than that.
As background, I had a ticket on Virgin Galactic, BO's main competitor, for 13 years, waiting in line for my chance to go to become a space tourist. But after postponement upon postponement, I got frustrated. Every year the company stated that 'next year" they'd be flying. This went on for more than a decade. It was like the Dallas Cowboys, formerly America's Team, saying that the next year would be their year, but not having been back to the Super Bowl since 1996. Ultimately, I had my VG deposit returned due to all the waiting. And to the fact that I wouldn't be wearing a space suit.
U-2 flier wearing a pressurized space suit.
When I flew last summer in a U-2 spy plane to above 70,000 feet, I was required to wear a bulky, claustrophobic suit, pressurized with oxygen and all of it. When I asked the pilots why they wear the suits for 12 hours at a time on their missions, they alluded to a potential depressurization in the cockpit, which would lead to a quick death, even at 70,000 feet. I mentioned that I had flown to 84,000 feet once in a MiG-25 over Russia, but without a pressure suit. They told me I was crazy.
Then, when I interviewed daredevil Felix Baumgartner on the anniversary of his 128,000-foot Red Bull parachute jump, I casually asked if BO or VG offered him a free trip all the way to space (BO reportedly charges $1 million per passenger, VG about half of that), would he take it? His surprising response: "No, they would have to pay me." Why? "Because they don't wear space suits."
So when we poke fun at the six women who just went up, mocking the flight as a Disney ride, maybe we aren't thinking it through. Those women were in more danger than a Disney ride. Hopefully, nothing will go south on any future flights, but it could.
As to whether they're astronauts, that's a separate issue. Personally, I think to call themselves that is a slap in the face to the NASA astronauts like John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, the Shuttle fliers and the like, who actually flew their craft for their country, and did meaningful scientific work, taking on the required risks in the process.
I recently spoke off the record to a BO alumni who had flown a few years ago about all of the hullaballoo. He affirmed that he'd been to space - and there's no question about that - but that he was a tourist. Astronaut is too strong a term, he said. There's nothing wrong with being a space tourist, by the way.
What was BO thinking when they devised this stunt, anyway? And why isn't the company doing damage control? The participants are just digging in.
When I was a student at Columbia Business School, we were required to read case studies that Harvard had prepared - examples of what a good company strategy is with a favorable outcome, as well as some strategy disasters. I'm guessing that Harvard may write a case study here. If so, hopefully participants in MBA programs will learn what not to do in a PR crisis.
