Katy Perry likes doing things a bit differently. This might have affected her music career, or possibly not. At one point, she was one of the biggest stars in the music business, but her albums have not done very well lately. She has not let that affect what she sees as the value of her person, though.
In fact, Perry got to do something on Monday that billions of us might want to do but will never get the chance to. She boarded a spacecraft made by Blue Origin, the space tourism company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Perry was literally launched into space. In doing so, she became one of the crew that made up the first all-female space flight since 1963.
Perry and her mates were the first all-female team of more than one to enjoy a space flight. The others onboard were Gayle King, Amanda Nguyen, movie producer Kerianne Flynn, entertainment reporter Lauren Sánchez (who is engaged to Bezos), and Aisha Bowe.
Katy Perry lands safely after being launched into space
The spacecraft took off a bit after 8:30 a.m. CT from its west Texas base and was in space for around 11 minutes. The flight was short, but it still had to be amazing. There was an audio-only live stream of the event, and the crew could be heard screaming at different times, but this might have been more from sheer enjoyment than fear.
Perry also sang during the flight but chose to pass on the chance to perform one of her own songs. Instead, she more fittingly sang "What a Wonderful World."
As with other flights from Blue Origin, the spacecraft barely entered space about 330,000 miles above the Earth before coming back down. Going any further would have required far more speed, and, likely, persons with the expertise to travel and stay in space to be aboard.
After landing, Perry told the media, "I think this experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you, how much love you have to give, and how loved you are until the day you launch. That’s why it was hard for me to go, because that’s all my love right there. And I have to surrender and trust that the universe is going to take care of me and protect me..."
She knelt and kissed the ground as well. We might all do that. If nothing else, the spaceflight proved that Katy Perry is a human being just like the rest of us.