When human history is next written, 2025 might be remembered as the year traveling to space became as much about social politics as physics. In April 2025, Blue Origin sent NS-31, the first all-female historic mission with a star-studded crew that included pop superstar Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen.
Instead, what was intended to be an 11-minute “giant leap” for female representation turned into what Nguyen has since described as a “nightmare.” Now eight months after the flight, Nguyen is speaking out, recounting a descent into deep depression spurred by an “avalanche of misogyny” that she says has ruined the greatest experience of her life.
A Dream Defiled by Vitriol
The first Vietnamese woman to reach space, Amanda Nguyen, anticipated the usual critics of “billionaire hobbyism.” What she didn’t anticipate was the intensity of individual, gendered hatred that came in its wake. On December 30, 2025, Nguyen shared a candid post on Instagram revealing that all the negative feedback left her bed-ridden for an entire week.
Critics, including the high-profile celebrities Emily Ratajkowski and Olivia Munn, called the trip “gluttonous” and “beyond parody.” Even if some of them were critiques waving the flag of class consciousness (a world where people “can’t afford eggs”), Nguyen and others have argued that opposition to this all-female crew adopted a particularly hateful, misogynistic flavor that doesn’t get tossed male crews’ way so easily.
Read also :
- Why AI-driven compliance is the next frontier for institutional finance
- Is Microsoft’s Reliance on AI Hitting Small Business
The “Collateral Damage” of Fame
One of the painful things for Nguyen was to be cast as a character in what he called the story of “celebrity vanity.” A bioastronautics researcher and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Nguyen had been training and advocating for assault survivors for years. For her, space was both a scientific and symbolic frontier.
The Scientific Purpose: Nguyen conducted flight experiments on women’s health.
The Symbolic Weight: Her journey coincided with the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the U.S.-Vietnam War — a meaningful celebration for a boat refugee’s child.
The Reaction Instead of hailing these subtleties, the internet focused on Katy Perry’s “space glam,” or Lauren Sánchez also being present as Jeff Bezos’s plus one.
Nguyen called herself the “collateral damage.” Her historic moment of vindication was, in her words, “mutilated” by trolls who sexualized the crew’s reactions and refused to acknowledge their professionalism.
A Pattern of ‘Small Men’ on the Internet
The experience of Nguyen is similar to that of Emily Calandrelli, the “Space Gal” and aerospace engineer who was launched to space as the 100th woman in space months before. Blue Origin was forced to remove Calandrelli’s reaction video after it became flooded with sexualized comments and insults.
This cycle, repetitive though it is, has the feeling of a “manosphere” backlash against privatization of space when it includes women. When men such as William Shatner or Jeff Bezos fly, discussion generally focuses on issues like “taxing the rich.” Whenever women are on the verge of flying, talk of their outfits and “emotionality” tends to make way for speculation as to whether they “deserve” the title astronaut at all.
“Publicly, I felt the need to be strong about this… but privately, I was battling both physical pain and emotional loss.” — Amanda Nguyen
The Road To Recovery: “The Fog is Lifting”
The impact on Nguyen’s mental health was considerable. She remembered a phone call with Gayle King shortly after the landing, in which she said it would take years for her to get over her depression. She said that a “fog of grief” descended upon her, and she could not even talk to Blue Origin personnel because she was crying so hard.
But now, as 2025 winds down, Nguyen says the support from her community has saved her. By sharing with us her ordeal, it is no longer the luxury of the flight but the harsh facts of online harassment that’s dominating conversation.
She is a bitter reminder that not even 62 miles above the Earth can women escape the earthbound pull of systemic bias. For Nguyen, the triumph is not simply that she went to space but that she managed to return — not to earth, but to the public eye.
The Legacy of NS-31
In spite of the trauma, Nguyen is still proud of what a momentous occasion it was. Bombs rained upon Vietnam when her family fled the country, but now they point to the sky and regard a Vietnamese woman among the ones shining brightly.
The NS-31 mission might have been a PR lightning rod, but for Nguyen and the millions of women like her, the battle to be seen as something more than “tourists” in what remains a man’s world rages on.
