Gayle King fires back about Blue Origin's space pollution plans after critics slammed her recent space expedition.
Earlier this week, six women took an 11-minute journey to the edge of space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, a company owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. The journalist was among other high-status celebrities including pop star Katy Perry and Bezos' fiancé Lauren Sanchez.
While the mission was celebrated as an all-female milestone, not everyone was cheering from the sidelines. Social media users and other celebrities questioned why millions were being spent on what they saw as a celebrity joyride, especially given the current state of the US.
However in one CBS Mornings interview, she defended the trip as not 'frivolous' and spoke about Blue Origin's plan to dump our planet's trash into space.
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"Because you're doing something in space doesn't mean you're taking anything away from Earth," King said. "And what you're doing in space is trying to make things better here on Earth."
The journalist, who was seen looking visibly 'miserable' before the spaceflight, added: "What Blue Origin wants to do is take the waste here and figure out a way to put it in space to make our planet cleaner."
But online commenters blasted the idea of launching garbage into orbit as a 'dumb' idea.
"Are you dumb? Putting trash in space? Do you know what that would do?" one X user replied whilst another wrote: "So the plan is to pollute outer space too? She so full of s***".
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According to the CEO and also the founder of Amazon, the goal isn’t to toss literal trash into space, but to eventually shift 'polluting industries' off Earth and into orbit. Back in 2021, after his own space trip, Bezos explained: “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space.
"And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is. That’s going to take decades to achieve, but you have to start. And big things start with small steps.”
He added: “We live on this beautiful planet. You can’t imagine how thin the atmosphere is when you see it from space. We live in it, and it looks so big. It feels like this atmosphere is huge and we can disregard it and treat it poorly. When you get up there and you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is.”
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However, many view the expedition to be less about progress and more about billionaire trips.
"She’s ignoring the fact that it was literally unnecessary and just a joyride for celebrities and wasting resources and MONEY in the current state of the country," one responded to King's video.
Rhetorically asking if her critics have 'ever been to space' made people realise how out of touch the journalist is with people's standard of living. "People are literally out here struggling and she’s like “have you beeen??” Lmao girl, what are you even talking about people can't even afford healthcare" one viewer argued.