On April 14th, 2025, at 9:30 AM ET, Katy Perry and the first all-female space crew launched into space for 11 minutes. The crew was made up of Perry, news anchor Gayle King, journalist and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, entrepreneur and activist Amanda Nguyen, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Klynn. The trip was funded and put on by Jeff Bezos’ space exploration company, Blue Origin. Bezos himself recently took a trip to space. Bezos has been under fire for his participation in the recent election and his company Amazon’s morals after a repeated history of undervaluing and underpaying employees. From the start, the mission was under fire.
Before the shuttle launched into space, there were questions about the validity of the trip, as many of the voyagers are extremely unqualified to go into space or be considered astronauts. Many felt that space shouldn’t be a tourist destination and should be respected as the unknown that it is. “I was so shocked to hear Katy Perry and Gayle King were going to space; I thought they were going to fly away or something.” Sophia Robertson stated. When the day came to launch the shuttle into space, many were surprised by the duration of the trip, or the lack thereof. The crew was in space for 11 minutes in total. Many found Perry’s trip to leave a bad taste in their mouth. She brought a daisy into space to represent her daughter, announced the setlist for her tour, and stared into the camera with Earth behind her the whole time. On return, the travelers embraced, fell to their knees to kiss the ground, and immediately started doing TV interviews. Not long after, the internet had its way with them; many called the travelers and the trip out of touch. Many people felt that, in the current state of the world, with tariffs, the cost of goods, and layoffs across the country, the trip was a slap in the face. American model Emily Ratajkowski stated in an Instagram post, “You’re going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that is single-handedly destroying the planet… I’m disgusted.” People were also angry about the lack of care for pollution output and global warming. For each traveler, 75 tons of carbon emissions were put into the atmosphere; in total, that is more than flying from New York to Singapore (the longest flight in the world) over 112 times. The trip also cost a whopping 28 million dollars, which many people felt could have been spent elsewhere.
The backlash carried Perry into her “Lifetimes Tour,” which kicked off in Mexico City on April 23rd, 2025. The tour had mixed reviews. Some praised Perry for bringing back the classics with a fun “choose your own adventure” segment in every show. But that quickly faded when fans saw Perry’s fighting and wire choreography; it also seemed to many viewers that the show didn’t seem rehearsed and was kind of thrown together. As Nae Humphrey states, “I’ve seen clips of the show, and it looks like a total mess; you couldn’t pay me to go.” Many are calling the show “cringeworthy” and disjointed. Perry’s show seems to be space-themed, like in Star Wars or Star Trek; she’s fighting aliens and swinging through that stage, but with her recent trip to space and the perception of it, many once again were calling Perry out of touch. Many also speculate that there was more to the show about space, perhaps even a space shuttle that had to be scrapped after the outrage of the space mission. This would make sense as to why the dancers and Perry seem confused on stage and why the whole thing seems thrown together. All this has led to Katy Perry speaking out and stating she felt like a “human piñata” after what has been said about her and her tour.
Perry is set to tour until December 2025 and play 84 shows in total. Many don’t believe she will make it through all the shows and believe she may cancel or postpone dates after the backlash and bad reviews the tour has gotten. Perry has support by her side: her partner, Orlando Bloom, and her daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom, who hopefully will support her through this and the rest of her tour. Perry will play a show in Seattle at Climate Pledge Arena on Monday, July 21st, 2025. Tickets are currently ranging from $200 to $65, but they are expected to drop the closer the show comes.