Gayle King, Blue Origin's all-women crew talk about historic space launch
this is the Blue Origins all female historic flight crew they made it to space today and of course that includes our very own Gail King you can see them there getting onto the stage so let's get you to that news conference happening right now keep clapping for you i don't know if that would ever get old if I were you guys to hear that I am an astronaut and an unbelievable thing you guys can now say that you are uh we are going to hear from all of you guys in a second but there are over 10,000 employees here at Blue Origin there are so many people that have put their heart and soul and their brains into this operation to make it possible to do what you guys did today and I just want to have a a moment what you guys did even going out with the parachute individuals that were gathering all the cords from the I'm going to get the vernacular wrong so don't judge me i'm new here but you went out i saw each one of you say thank you to them for even even gathering the parachute you paid attention to everyone that was involved in this process and it was a really special moment to see that out there at the capsule so one of the incredible individuals that has made this all possible is Audrey Powers she's the vice president of mission and flight operations and also a fellow astronaut so let's hear from Audrey now thank you please please please thank you thank you very much Chrissa uh hi everyone welcome thank you so much for traveling from wherever you traveled from to join us today uh really really appreciate you being here today i I represent a very talented group of people on the New Shepard program and also all across team blue as we call ourselves and I want you all to know how immensely proud proud we are uh to have flown this group to space today uh we have quite an opportunity here on New Shepard to give people this experience and to change their lives uh I want you to know first and foremost how very seriously we take that responsibility uh this impressive group of people I want to say from them thank you so much for trusting us today um to give this to you we very much appreciate it uh we're also very fortunate to have some other astronauts in the crowd today um that joined us to watch this uh historic flight so I'd like to ask all the astronauts present can you please stand up just so we can see you there are so many of you here thank you thank you thank you um I've I've had the wonderful I've had the wonderful pleasure of in my career of working with many of you and thank you for the trails that you've blazed for us and thank you for the support that you've given many of us very very directly and thank you for the inspiration that you continue to give us uh I have been at Blue for 12 years and I've supported the New Shepard program um for every one of the days that I have been here and uh five years ago um the head of the New Shepard program gave me the best job at Blue Origin and that is true i will fight anyone over it i have the best job i'm the head of flight operations and maintenance here on the New Shepard program and uh we have an audacious vision here at Blue of more accessible like dramatically more accessible to the human population and we want to do that first and foremost as we say for the benefit of Earth and New Shepard plays a really important role in that vision uh I had the great privilege of representing team blue as the first employee to fly on New Shepard on uh NS18 so 13 New Shepard flights ago um I was lucky enough to fly and I will never forget of course the the stunning um just breathtaking view of our home planet um but I also will never forget the deep just rich blackness of the void of space i will never forget that view it is seared in my mind and it's something that I can't describe properly i still haven't figured out the words to describe what that texture thing looked like um it made me feel in the moment incredibly just shockingly small and we hear this a lot about views of the Earth from deep space we are a speck of dust in this vast vast universe and what I processed after the flight is that I and each of us that has this experience um can have such a tremendous impact and it's up to me whether I want that impact to be positive or whether I want it to be negative and so um New Shepard is what we call the first step in this audacious vision and it is a technology demonstrator for all of our other programs you will find the technology that flies on New Shepard also present in our new Glenn vehicles in our other engine programs in our landers that will land on the moon so it is wonderfully important for that reason but it is important because we are giving people who are not career astronauts who have not worked their entire lives to become a professional astronaut as we traditionally know that term we are giving them this experience and when they come back they get to make a choice as to what they do with this experience and so um we also are working very hard on New Shepard with people who have amazing challenges and disabilities and this experience is accessible for them and we are going to fly every single one of them and that makes me so so proud that we're going to give these people this experience um that never would have had it before yeah let's clap for that thank you we feel very very passionately about that um so we're we're um we're going to fly all of them i am convinced but until we can fly all of them I encourage these amazing women to never get tired of answering the question so how was it what was it like how did it feel you will hear you'll hear this thousands of times right from your best friends and your family members but also from like random strangers on the street they will come up to you and say "Oh I know you did that what was it like how did it feel?" Um and what an amazing thing we are so fortunate to be on the receiving end of that question right so on a very personal note I'd encourage you to just embrace every opportunity to answer that that question and give people that taste before they get it for themselves um on another very personal note uh this flight matters a great deal to me uh it matters to us women who have been in this spaceflight industry for decades and decades just putting our heads down and humbly getting the work done even when we were the only female in the classroom in the test lab in the control center uh it matters for youngsters who might now have a broader view of what it is to be an astronaut and what it is to experience spaceflight and I am so very grateful that my career somehow landed me in the position to be involved in this flight um I am so fulfilled today so on behalf of a deeply deeply grateful team blue congratulations to you all thanks thank you so much Audrey there's so many things that I just uh thought about as I heard you speaking and uh I want to get into it with all of you guys and first of all just I felt like we should all do one big breath in and one breath out this like collective sigh of relief that you guys are back that you are safe but also just this incredible experience that you've had and I know all your friends and family that are here in the front few rows also feel like we should just take a deep breath so shall we do it okay I'm going to count down from three we're going to breathe in and out i love yoga here we go 3 2 1 All right don't we all feel better okay i know I do lauren congratulations i want to start with you uh in researching this entire process I heard a lot about the overview effect and it was something that I didn't know anything about but what I have learned that you now will be able to share or to to experience is because when people that go up to space and see Earth from space they come back and their perception of Earth is different how has your perception of Earth changed now I know albeit it's only an hour or so since you've been back but how do you feel yeah definitely still processing right we all talked about that um profound is like the one word I would use um I was up there and you see Earth and then you know it's completely black but what we got was the moon we got to see the moon and it was in complete and utter darkness and then you look back at Earth and it's like this beautiful jewel it was quiet it felt like it was breathing it was so alive and that's kind of what I felt just this aliveness of Earth but you look at it and you go "Wait a second we're all on this planet all the people that we love this is it." And that's I was like we have one planet because out there it's dark it is um you know William Shatner even said this when he went to space and now I understand what he was talking about it's like death and um I don't know it just made me want to Oh yeah i just come back with an open heart and um it really opens me wide open and hopefully I can bring that uh to other people and also just protect this planet we're on i mean there's this is the only one we've got so um I'm completely and utterly humbled by this experience uh wow and beyond grateful absolutely there are so many people on this planet that you love and care about you have one in particular that you would like to highlight today who is that oh I get to do that right now oh okay um uh there is one person who I Let me just I was in community college i'll say this really quick so everyone has a chance to talk up here i don't want to take up a lot of time um and she saw a little girl in the back of the room who never felt like she belonged and um she pulled her up and she got me tested for dyslexia and my life kind of took off from there and Lori if you're here I flew this feather to space for you lori there you are everybody put your hands together for Lauren i can give it to you later i can give it to you later but I just want you to know uh this teacher changed Here we can pass it changed my life and for all of you teachers out there just know that you have such an impact on the kids in your classroom and Lori thank you so much for for seeing the little girl in the back who didn't think she belonged a thank you Lori thank you thank you Lauren for sharing that i know that we all had the incredible privilege of seeing you guys go up but we didn't get to see what was happening inside the capsule so why don't we take a look at that video right now we haven't seen it i want to see it myself 1 2 3 [Applause] [Music] I got you i got you Flynn oh the moon you guys i don't have to tell you look at the moon look okay look at the moon gosh oh my gosh wa wa wa that's amazing oh my god wow that's good just I know Katie's face says it all right there [Applause] [Laughter] so Katie I'll I'll jump to to uh you for a comment you holding up that daisy I know you got to tell me outside the capsule how important that was not only because it's your daughter's name but everything that it encompasses for you and I would love for you to share it with the audience i don't know if I can cry anymore um daisies some sometimes people consider daisies weeds because they grow everywhere and through everything and they show up in so many different places but daisies are just so resilient and flowers for me I believe are are like God's laughter and God's smile and I brought a daisy because I have so much love for my daughter Daisy and I have so much love for mother earth and I believe you can see um the beauty in the mother earth in a single resilient da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d daisy that's why I brought it it's beautiful Gail when you saw even just a snippet of that right there first of all congratulations you did it you did it i know you did it no what what's No what's what's funny about this uh Chris is that our instructor Sarah my new best friend said you are my most success story because I've never trained anyone that was afraid to fly was a nervous flyer so I consider you a big success and I'm so proud of us i really am proud of me because I never in a gazillion years thought I could do this and I just saw a video of us walking up the uh I don't want to call it plank but what what do you what's the proper what's the proper thing Lauren that's right you can call it you can call it anything you want you're an on the threshold of life yes walking up the platform and people are ringing the bell and everybody's smiling and I'm just just walking in and it's because at that moment I was so afraid i just wanted to get into my seat because I just wanted to let the training kick in i I just wanted to get inside the capsule and sit down so the process of walking up there was a little daunting for me and I got a text from a friend who's from Germany so you know you have to appreciate the sense of humor he says "Once you get there you're going to feel like it's sex with the gods." Well that's never had sex with a god to my knowledge so thank you for the visual i I didn't think that but I did think that what all the stuff that you hear about the blackness and the blue is is it's a neon blue and it's still and it's quiet and we were all feeling this experience together i I know I will never forget it so for me it just says to me if I can do this I I was telling I was telling these guys I might even now get my ears pierced i've never gotten my ears pierced because that hurts but I I feel I walked out of there thinking gosh I can do anything i can do anything and when you get out and they say "Welcome home welcome home." Never felt and
sounded so good oh that that is so that's so amazing and you just summarized so many different things because so many people are afraid of a lot of things yes but your fear was a big fear a big fear and so for you to conquer that and do it with such humility and such vulnerability too instead of trying to act tough instead of trying to act brave just be who you are and Lauren you always talk about this who you are is enough if you are there then you belong and guess what Gail you belong in the astronaut club oh thanks i still struggle with that word i So cuz I know May is here can is here i know i know i I I still I honestly can't feel astronaut title yet i'm very glad to be part of the club but I look at these women and I go "Wow wow wow." But I'm so happy to be a member in any kind of way absolutely kerianne when you watched that video uh what did you think watching it back and then have again just a short amount of time to process everything that's happened to you but how are you feeling right now i'm feeling a lot more calm since the first time you and I um I I feel a I felt a sense of peace up there um I think I blacked out during most of it except for when I was looking out the window which is really what I wanted to get out of it and as everyone has described the vast darkness of space it's a black it's a color you cannot describe it was very important for me to see the moon um and look down on the earth and know that the people that I love the most were were down there it was a pretty um transcendal you know transcendental mo moment for me um but I think you know one of the one of the biggest things actually as a as a filmmaker is I almost felt as if I was watching a really intimate film um and I wasn't only a witness to that film but I was also the storyteller beautiful did it feel like you were up there for a long time or did it feel really quick one of the things during training that I said that that really surprised me was it felt like our quote zero g time was really long and I knew I was going to have a lot of time to look out the window and go upside down and um it went so fast yeah it went so fast i see all you guys shaking your head i could have taken two more minutes there's two oh now the one that didn't want to go up now wants to stay up longer my two more minutes two more minutes we'll take that back to the blue team she would like to increase this experience yes I would have liked two more minutes amanda I know this is a lifelong dream of yours and now it is a dream fulfilled now that you can say that you had this experience and to Audrey's point earlier earlier you will be asked about it over and over again when I ask you how was it what is your response what a beautiful world we have and when I looked over it all I could think yes the science was done and that actually is a dream in itself you know I think one of the happiest this is going to make me sound like a nerd and I am so I own that um was when I found out that we could operate the science inside the capsule that I don't know originally the my experiments were going to be passive payloads um which I'm also very see the data from that but to be able to do that and operate it uh while we had that our moment in microgravity was was such a phenomenal dream for me and the person who had to to sacrifice that in order to find justice um was able to do that so That in itself was a dream come true um but I I did get to float my zero G indicators um one Oh I showed both of you yeah I had the great luxury but I know that the audience doesn't know what you had i would love if you shared it with them yeah after I left the hospital after my rape kit I wrote down a promise to myself never never never give up um I taped it to my laptop and looked at it every day as I fought for my rights um and that was my zero G indicator looking at it over Earth and for me in that moment I just want every survivor and every person who's ever had a dream deferred to know that your dreams are valid that even if your life has thrown you a lot of challenges um you will make it through and even if your dreams are as wild as going to space um they matter and you can get there too if I got there you can get there too beautiful Aisha i know representation yes please clap to that representation is so important congratulation the first Bohemian woman in space ladies and gentlemen and we saw on that short video which I also would like to be two minutes longer because I want to see everything that was going on up there you had your flag uh explain and and expand upon the importance of representation for you up there in 1961 when Ellen Shepard was launched we know where he left from but do you know where he landed he landed in Grand Bahama and today I had an opportunity to be on a flight that mimicked that trajectory and allowed me to carry the legacy of my grandfather who came from Exuma Bahama which was my call sign on this trip and it carried the flag of the Bahamas as a powerful reminder of the past the present and the future of space and your grandfather was here today yes he is where is he where is he there he is there he is 92 years young thank you for being here you must be so proud all right I would love to open it up now to the press for some questions and I know that appropriately enough the first question comes from PBS outlet hey everyone I'm Mark all right you were just listening to all six women who were part of the Blue Origins all women flight to space a historic one by the way so you heard all those women including Gail King by the way who you know made some comments there that had a bunch of us out here laughing in the studio about how it was like sex with the gods amazing experience I'm sure but we want to bring in an expert now to tell us more about how all of this was like he's a Franklin Institute chief astronomer and planetarium director Derek Pittz derek so nice to have you with us here today uh first how important is this growing of the industry of just basically space tourism how important is this well this actually is fairly important because of the fact that what it's doing is it's expanding our uh non-government agency capability to access low Earth orbit and that's a really critical thing you know there are roles to be had for the different agencies and uh companies that have the capability to get to space and doing space tourism like this is practice for accessing low earth orbit and building our capability out uh to access low earth orbit across a number of companies and that's a really good thing to have that kind of uh availability of resources to get to space and and we know this was a 10-minute journey but I'm sure a lot of people are watching and wondering what was that like can you walk us through what these women may have witnessed or seen as they were up there well first of all there's the anticipation before launch of actually going to space and that's you have to count that as part of the experience you know getting yourself ready to do this but then once the spacecraft lifts off you know they're feeling the acceleration as the rocket is rising up from the surface of the earth heading up to more than 335,000 ft and uh topping you know what is it 2500 miles an hour and so uh what they feel once they get to the maximum altitude and then start to come back is they begin to feel the zero gravity or weightless experience and they can look out the windows and see the curvature of the earth see space in this case see the rising full moon it's a great experience for them gosh it sounds surreal too as you describe all of that uh six women got to go there we know Gail King was one of them katy Perry it all brings a sense of relatability to all of this but then there's this big question for all of us who may not even get a chance to go to space how accessible is this for the everyday people out there well I think what we saw today is a perfect example of how accessible it is for everyday people on the one hand you know we're talking about what does it take to do the training what what are the physical parameters what is the uh physical experience like what kind of training do you have to go through those sorts of things i think what we saw today as well as the flights that went previous to this as part of Blue Origin is that almost anybody has the physical capability to take a trip like this but in terms of accessibility this is expensive of course right now it costs a lot of money for individuals to travel to space like this so I think it's going to be a while before we see the price come down to a point where it's really reasonable for anybody to just say purchase a ticket to go uh if we look at what happens in one of the other companies that's advertising space tourism trips you know the ticket prices are extraordinarily expensive hundreds of thousands of dollars so this is not something that everybody's going to be doing you know this summer just for alarm right right we got a while to go but it's also very nice to kind of see those women uh go through the experience too and get a sense of just how surreal this must all be derek Pittz thank you so much for joining us on 247 we appreciate your time today thanks for having
2025-04-20 00:12
