Actually depending on the experiment or studies being done, poop can actually be very useful. She’s more like an unwanted virus or stray bacterial growth that’s ruining something good.
I mean... Is a passenger on a train, who paid for their ticket, a useful load? No, the train would go faster without them, but you don't call passengers cargo
Calling yourself an astronaut doesn't make you any less or more useful. Nobody expected her to do any research up there or to steer the ship or whatever.
The chick paid money to get flown into space, that's about it. Don't know much about her but probably there are dozens of better reasons for hating her than this. I believe many would do the same given an opportunity.
Nothing but utter respect to real astronauts. While I do not know any personally, I spent a chunk of my life studying and working in a space-related field, and I have an idea about how ridiculously hard it is to become one.
Still, I uphold my opinion that you can do much worse than playing pretend. I wouldn't fault you for thinking less of a person who acts as an astronaut when they clearly are not one, but actively and publicly trying to demonize them is taking it a step too far. At least this is what this thread looked like to me, which rubbed me the wrong way I guess, there are so many despicable people in the world doing all sorts of bad shit that some privileged woman fantasizing about being a space explorer is pretty far down the list for me.
In the 1980s, they sent three congresscritters on Space Shuttle missions. One of them was John Glenn, who everyone figured had earned it. Another was Jake Garn, who managed to set a record for the worst space sickness ever recorded - they jokingly now measure space sickness in the units of "Garns", so he turned out to be slightly useful after all.
And then there was Bill Nelson, who got the nickname "The Load", because the only thing he was doing was taking up payload capacity that wasn't being used for anything useful.
That's the correct category for Katy Perry and other "space tourists".
Well she's been to space and you haven't. Agreeing to sit in a rocket, shoot up to the sky, and then fucking freefall toward the earth hoping the thrusters will engage, that took BALLS. She is not a fully trained astronaut, but that much nobody can take away from her.
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u/DearCalendar4508 Jul 29 '26
Astronaut adjacent