The Blue Origin launched an all-female crew, including Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez, on an 11-minute suborbital trip aboard the New Shepard rocket in April 2025. The mission was live-streamed and watched by millions, but that didn’t stop the internet from spiraling into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Life & Style takes a look at some of the wildest conspiracy theories and how they came to be.
What’s the Blue Origin Hatch Conspiracy Theory?
A video clip showing the Blue Origin capsule after it landed quickly went viral because of the way the hatch opened into the capsule. In the clip, someone seemingly opened the door from the inside before quickly slamming it shut. A few moments later, Jeff Bezos, Lauren’s fiancé, walked up to the door and opened it.
“The Blue Origin New Shepard crew capsule’s hatch is designed to be opened from the outside by the recovery team after landing, as a safety measure to ensure controlled and secure egress,” one person wrote alongside the clip via X. “Space capsules, including New Shepard’s, are generally not designed to open from the inside immediately after landing due to safety protocols, such as ensuring the external environment is secure and the capsule is stable.”
However, according to NASA, “For nominal operations, hatches and doors shall be operable by a single crewmember in no more than 60 seconds, from both sides of the hatch.”
But try reasoning with people on the internet …
Azealia Banks Had Thoughts on the Blue Origin Flight
Singer Azealia Banks was not convinced that Katy, Gayle and the rest of the Blue Origin crew actually went to space because of how quick their trip was.
“I don’t think they even went to space. That s–t was fake as f–k,” Azealia wrote in a since-deleted post on X. “How they back already it’s been like 40 mins.”
Before the women even boarded the ship, it had been made clear that the duration of the trip would only last around 11 to 12 minutes because it was a suborbital mission designed to reach the edge of space without entering orbit. The New Shepard crew capsule only took a brief voyage above the Kármán Line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space which sits 62 miles into the sky.
Several Conspiracy Theorists Thought Blue Origin’s Flight ‘Looked Fake’
One TikTok user pointed out that, while in space, the women’s hair on the flight wasn’t exactly how female astronauts’ hair had looked without gravity in previous voyages.
“Am I the only one who noticed how their hair is just, like, gently floating? Like it’s being swept by Beyoncé’s fan on the low setting?” the content creator jokingly pointed out in the video posted on April 16, 2025.
She also compared photos of previous astronauts in space, and in the pictures their hair was standing straight up, but commenters pointed out that the Blue Origin flight crew wasn’t that far into space.
“They didn’t hit actual space, just the very edge,” one person wrote in the comments section, while another credited the lack of lift to hairspray.
