Bezos' All-Female Flight Doesn't Prove What He Thinks

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sent six women to space and back on Monday, and everyone involved is talking a good game about inspiring more girls to study science and become astronauts. Sounding less-than-impressed with all this is New York Times culture writer Amanda Hess. This was space tourism, not science, she notes. Those aboard were like "payload specialists with a specialty in marketing private rockets." Two withering lines:

• "If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism's most decadent spoils alongside the world's wealthiest men."
• "The message is that a little girl can grow up to be whatever she wishes: a rocket scientist or a pop star, a television journalist or a billionaire's fiancée who is empowered to pursue her various ambitions and whims in the face of tremendous costs."

Hess also detects a bedrock of sexism underneath all this, part of the "billionaire fantasy" of escaping Earth. If that's ever going to happen, women will need to join the movement. "The private aerospace industry's largely male clientele may not wish to bro down forever on Mars," writes Hess. "They will desire moms to go to space with them, and fiancées too." (Read the full essay.)