Space, Selfies, and STEM: Who Really Wins?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, where we talk about issues in underrepresentation and have difficult conversations. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database with a goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

Hello Samah.

[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello, Michelle.

[00:00:21] Speaker A: It’s been a little while since we recorded, and there are a lot of reasons for that, right? So we’ve both been traveling.

I got laid off from my full-time job, which means that my life was thrown into a little bit of chaos, and I still haven’t figured out where I’m going to land, how I’m going to land, or what my next big thing. So, looking for sponsorships, looking for opportunities, and I’m going to create some side hustles as I go so that I can get some income going here. But yeah, if anybody has a job they want to offer me. You’re listening to this. I’m available.

But yeah, this is not a commercial for Michelle. But speaking of landing, let’s talk about, first of all, how are you? Sorry, how are you?

[00:01:13] Speaker B: I’m good, I’m good. Afterwards, WordCamp Asia, I don’t know, everything went so busy at work, and now, of course, I’m preparing for WordCamp Europe and other things. But life is okay.

Is.

[00:01:25] Speaker A: It’s okay.

Lately, there have been a lot of layoffs in the WordPress community, at Automattic, and other places. And so there is a huge influx of job seekers in the market here, which is not making it feel comfortable for any of us who are searching right now. So my sympathies go out to everybody right now who is looking for a job, including myself. And if there’s any way that we can support you if you are an underrepresented person, please go to underrepresentedntech.com and create a profile for yourself there. If you’re interested in speaking on WordPress topics, go to wpspeakers.com and create a profile for yourself there as well. All of those are going to help you with your SEO. They’re also going to help you be discovered by people who are looking for speakers and people who are working. Then, there is the WP World, which is what Marcus Burnett has put together for us and links to your WordPress.org profile. It also lets you mark yourself as available to work, and people are looking at those places as well. So I strongly encourage you, if you, like me, are looking for work, to put yourself in those Places, it certainly can’t hurt. It can only help you to be found in more places than not. So I will say that.

But to go back to looking for a place to land, as I said earlier, which is a perfect segue into today’s topic, in about an hour’s time, for the time we’re recording this. So by the time you hear this, it will be history unless it gets scrubbed.

A Blue Origin rocket will be taking off and not doing an orbit or anything like that. It will be going up into space for about an 11-minute trip and straight back down again.

And I’m not sure how; I haven’t read the whole article. I don’t know if they land in the exact same place. They come down to a different landing place.

But what’s historic about this is that it’s an all-women crew, including Katy Perry and Gayle King. If you’re not familiar with either of those women, Katy Perry is a musician whom most people have probably heard of. And Gail King is on the morning news on one of the U.S. stations here in the United States.

So the other women, do you have the article up there? Could you tell us who the other women are?

[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yes, I can do that.

Lauren Schnutz, also Sanchez.

Okay, I just killed her name. I’m sorry, I put her name completely.

The other woman’s. I cannot find their name easily.

[00:04:16] Speaker A: Oh, I found it. Okay. Lauren Sanchez, who’s a former NASA scientist, Amanda Nguyen, singer Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, former NASA scientist Aisha Bo, and film producer Carrie Ann Flynn. I’m sorry, Lauren Sanchez is an entrepreneur, and Amanda Nguyen is a.. I’m probably slaughtering her name. Former NASA scientist. So these six women will do this launch and come back down.

And I have thoughts, I have thoughts about some of these things.

I saw this this morning on TikTok, so I was unaware of it until I saw it on TikTok this morning. And I’m not exactly sure how much money it costs to send six women up into space for 11 minutes. Six people don’t matter who they are up in space for 11 minutes. But I imagine it’s got to be at least in the millions of dollars, if not more.

[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:05:15] Speaker A: And while it’s, I always want to applaud anything that furthers women in their chosen professions and especially in tech. This would be part of STEM and things like that. I still wonder how this does that.

Right. So I’ve Watched other women who have their whole lives, wanted to be astronauts, go into low orbit and do payload experiments in low gravity. And I understand that those experiments further science.

This doesn’t feel like that to me. This feels like, this feels like tourism, this feels like space tourism. And I’m not sure if that actually furthers women’s research or space research science. And it also kind of has a vibe of those millionaire billionaires that went down to see the Titanic and ended up losing their lives. And I certainly hope that doesn’t happen with today’s launch.

But I wonder about, could that money have been spent in better ways to further women in STEM than just sending up a couple of celebrities and other women for 11 minutes into space?

What are your thoughts on that? And then feel free to talk about the photos while I blow my nose.

[00:06:58] Speaker B: For me first, look at the beginning when I say all women, I was happy, excited. But then, when I found out it’s like Katy Perry in it, I said, What? Why? Like, because it makes sense. And then I thought, because it’s going to be a female scientist or identify themselves as a female, they’re going to do something really extraordinary. And then when I found out it’s only 11 minutes, it’s just like the fun ride. It’s little bit literally pissed me off. Yes, I’m celebrating. It’s all female, and of course, it may help to contribute to exploring the space. But 11 minutes, you know what I mean? What are you going to do with 11 minutes? The other thing is I was checking out and I saw the photo for them in Elle magazine, and I really hate all the time we have to put pictures for women that look so perfect. You know, the way they dress, the hair, the makeup, the body, and everything. And I like it to be more what really real women look like, you know what I mean? Because they all look like pop stars, do you know what I mean? When you look at them like, hey, you, pretty hair, pretty face, amazing figure.

[00:08:17] Speaker A: A lot of cleavage, 6-inch high, stiletto heels.

[00:08:20] Speaker B: Exactly. And for me, like, like, of course you can be an attractive, sexy women and you can be a brilliant woman at the same time. We’re not saying no, no, the scientists have to be with the glasses, and look different. But the idea for me was like, I don’t get it what they’re doing. And everybody’s trying to celebrate it, to support women. But I don’t understand how this trip can really support women or inspire future generations, especially young girls, to pursue careers and STEM fields. Like, I don’t know if someone will say Katy Perry, like, say, yeah, I’m gonna study harder. I want to be a scientist when I grow up. I, I don’t.

[00:09:01] Speaker A: Maybe, I won’t say, you know, absolutely zero. But I also don’t know how inspirational this may or may not be, and I might just be really negative about it. The one thing I did notice is that there are two pictures that we see on ABC News. We’re going to share the links in the show notes.

One of them is these six women on some kind of scaffolding, which is how they get up to the rocket.

And they’re all still striking some poses. The hair is perfect, all of this kind of thing.

In the other photo that we’re talking about, they’re all dressed in black. There’s some cleavage showing. There’s a bustier. Like, there’s this clearly not scientific clothing. However, I agree that women should wear whatever they want. This was clearly designed for sex appeal. This one, this one photo.

Amanda Nguyen Wen. I wish I could learn how to say your name. I apologize to everybody listening, but Amanda, who is a former NASA scientist, is not smiling in either picture. And it doesn’t look to me like she’s trying to strike that sexy, smoldering, unsmiling pose. She looks uncomfortable to me. This is not how science is supposed to be. And she’s the one scientist, you know, in the group, or one of two scientists in the group, I guess. Aisha Bo is another former NASA scientist. And so, yeah, I just, yeah.

[00:10:37] Speaker B: I don’t know how to say it. Like, I don’t know. They said the mission, the importance of this mission, is to represent women and involve the landscape of space travel.

I prefer that we put this money into a lot of different research, like breast cancer, women, and things for women in education and the health care system. Because I know the healthcare system for women in the US is really not the best one around the world, or even good at all.

[00:11:14] Speaker A: Right.

[00:11:15] Speaker B: Certification, single moms, different things. We can invest money in it. Of course, at the end, it’s their money. I don’t know who’s paying for it, and they can spend it the way they want. But I don’t like the way they said it is for us to celebrate this amazing trip because it is for women, to empower women. It’s just like people have money, women, and they want to go to space, and they look good, and they want to take photos, and they are trying to sell it to us in a different way. What? What is it? Yeah, yeah, they don’t.

[00:11:50] Speaker A: There are two women that I follow on Instagram, TikTok, and all the places. One is Kelly Girardi, and the other is Emily Calandrelli. And both of those women, since they were young children, have wanted to be astronauts. And both of them have now gone into space, into low orbit to do these payload experiments, right? So they call them payload officers. And I had to look up what that meant when I was learning about them, which is to do these low-gravity experiments, which do further science. Right. So the experiments that they were doing were about how it affects different parts of what we do here on Earth. Right. With full gravity. And both of those women, Emily Calandrelli, were the hundredth woman in space, which is very exciting. Right, for her. And both of those women, like Emily, used to have a Science show on YouTube and on TV where children were learning science. She still does her own experiments and things and teaches children about science.

Kelly Girardi, there’s, she’s written books, her daughter Delta is, you know, wants to be the next scientist and that kind of thing. And they are doing everything they can to. And I’ve invited them both on the show, but they haven’t responded. And I understand they have, they’re big people, hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers, but they haven’t invited to be on the show.

But both of them are doing what they can to forward women in science and STEM activities, right? And, and careers, not because they are celebrities, but because they are celebrities because they are scientists. They are not pseudo-scientists because they’re celebrities. And I think that’s part of the difference. And I hope that this, I hate that we have a show where we’re like, these women aren’t really scientists. And this is really not helping because I always want women to make strides. And an all-women’s crew is historic. But at what cost, I guess, is what I’m asking.

[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s for me, of course.

We know all of us women play a really vital role in the tech industry. But I think if they pick up other people like Sheryl Sandberg, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing her name right, like she’s the former CEO of Meta, Reshma Sajini, founder of Girls Who Code, and Fei Fei Le, an AI researcher and a professor at Stanford. And there are a lot of women. You know, I prefer to see them there because for me, that will be like I want to be her. She worked so hard in her life. She achieved amazing things, and I look up to her for it. For me, I don’t know Katy Perry, with all due respect, whatever she is. She’s a singer, and she has achieved. But what I mean is we cannot replace someone who is like a scientist. Or something is going out to space. Maybe I’m too jealous they went to space and I can’t go, and I can’t afford to go.

But I prefer to a real woman. What I mean by really men who really work hard in the stem who really made rot for a lot of women who because like in the 70s, 80s, 90s and until now it’s not really easy to reach that level of leadership or the high level.

And I just want to see those women go. I want to celebrate them. I don’t care if they look good in the photo shoot. I don’t care if all of them look like they have perfect skin and perfect hair. I just want to see someone and say like damn, I want to be her. I wish I worked harder to reach half which what she’s already reached. But it is a little bit, I hope they will come back.

That’s the evil me speaking. But yeah I would love to know what is the cost because honestly I was searching quickly.

I would love to know what is the cost of this trip because like I love to see a little bit like how they want to support women in STEM or other fields or in general because they really presenting it as supporting women this mission and. And celebrating women and inclusivity and diversity and it’s the first all female mission since 1963. So I just want to really yeah have more meaningful that we look good and then to go to the space.

[00:16:38] Speaker A: So I just looked it up. It. It says that when people are asking how much it costs to go on Blue Origin. Now this is based on. Whose website is this?

Revfine.com so it’s between 200 and $300,000 per person and a fully refundable deposit of $150,000 is required to reserve a seat.

And again, this is space travel for the.

For just for space travel. It’s. It’s basically space tourism when you’re reserving a seat on something like that.

But. But according to another article Wikipedia this is called the New Shepherd. This. This particular space vehicle is called the New Shepherd. And that I believe is in deference to Alan Shepard, who was the first person in the United States to go up into space and come back down again.

It was reported that somebody else. Mundao, I don’t know who paid 2.5 million for two seats on Blue Origin flight. So it says here that what you pay for a Blue Origin space flight depends on who you are back in 2022, but they didn’t. And then another one on BBC says Blue Origin is not been released. Full ticket prices are €150,000 US or €114,575. I’m sorry, British pounds. A deposit is required to reserve a seat. So I don’t know for sure, but I don’t know. I just.

[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah, and in one of the articles you shared with me, they explain a little bit about the preparation, and of course, they need to do a little bit of work, exercising.

But one thing that really pushed my buttons was deciding what to bring to space. You know, it’s like they have a three-pound limit. One king said she would choose photographs to bring a memento from her grandson to space. The other thing is that Katy Berry just plans to bring something with life in it to remind us how precious Earth is. But still, I, you know, I have a little bit of problem with it because it sounds so, you know, bubbly and pinky and, and for me, like, okay. Because they also take in a lot of fuzz and a lot of the news about it. Like all women. When you read all women’s missions, you start thinking That’s really good. They’re gonna do something, and it’s gonna be really meaningful. And then when you go deeper 11 minutes and, and all of this, you see like okay, what a sad situation because at the end it is not to really show how women can be really added value or are they really active or they’re really important in STEM fields. No, it’s just like famous people, and accidentally they’re all of women and they like to share what they’re going to do.

[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It’s just a little. I mean, on the one hand, great, it’s good; it’s calling attention to women in science. But they’re not really women in science, except for two of them. There’s. They’re just people who can afford to go, you know, and it’s like the, and another famous person that had gone on this trip with Bezos before was William Shatner. Like, he just went because he used to be on Star Trek. You know, like James Kirk on Star Trek. It’s like it’s odd. I’ll just say that I think that space tourism is odd if but if it does help us scientifically, great. But I’m not sure how much it does. So I would love to hear from people in the know more than we are if this is actually forwarding science or if it is just, hey, I got to take, you know, a ride into space and back down. I’m. I’m just very curious about all of that. And so. And I will, I will leave it to our audience, if they’ve listened so far, to go look up the new Shepherd Blue origin and see the shape of the rocket. And I think that also. I’m not going to say what it looks like on our show, but it’s kind of hysterical. So, yeah, I will let you all look at that and then make the jokes that you will because I will. But not on the air.

[00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And it’s at the end. Good for them. I’m a little bit jealous, to be honest. If I want to go, I’m just being honest. But if you have the money and the will, this is your money. You can spend it the way that you want.

[00:21:42] Speaker A: Absolutely.

[00:21:43] Speaker B: And dress and do whatever they want. We just having. We are sharing our opinion, and I hope that in the future it’s going to be amazing. Mission all of its women, and they’re doing something great and helping humanity, helping our Earth, or exploring something that will be written in history. That mission all women did that. That would be more something to celebrate.

[00:22:09] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Absolutely. So, all right. We don’t know what we’re going to talk about next week. Although I have, we actually, you know, I think what we should talk about next week is I did share with you in. Because we just send notes back and forth when we see things. There is an event coming up in June called Work Pride 2025, and it’s basically an all-inclusive event. Let me take that back. All inclusive. Not as in vacation. It is a Pride event. So it’s inclusion. It’s an inclusion event celebrating the differences of people in tech. And we’re seeing more and more of those kinds of events. So we’re going to talk about that next week. We’re going to talk about inclusion. We’ll talk a little bit about what’s coming up with WordCamp Europe, because I don’t know about you, but it looks like a lot more women on the stage this year than there have been in the past. So I’m happy about that.

[00:23:02] Speaker B: That’s something I’m pleased about.

[00:23:07] Speaker A: And so, yeah, I’m excited about those kinds of things. So we’ll talk about that next week. If you have ideas for us to discuss about events that you know of, please let us know so we can have those before our conversation. If you have thoughts about this space exploration, tourism, whatever we’re calling it, we want to hear about that too. So comment on any of our socials, send us a message. DM us however you want to get in touch. We are open to it. We would love to hear from you.

[00:23:35] Speaker B: And by the way, we should say something about that. We’re back. So we are.

[00:23:39] Speaker A: We’re back. We’re back. We’re gonna stay back to continue to talk about the issues that matter. Thank you for indulging us in our little hiatus. It was just, I think it was much-needed mental health break as well for both of us. It works out well when we’re in sync with one another that way.

But we’re back and we will see you again next week. Thank you. Bye.

If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode or just want to say Hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com See you next week.