Set off Warning: This piece accommodates references to sexual violence.
Blue Origin’s “historic all-female flight” took its 11-minute voyage on April 14 and… nicely. Folks had emotions. About area tourism, about Jeff Bezos, about Katy Perry singing to her fellow “crew members” as they descended again to Earth — it was all an enormous sizzling mess. It’s simple to say that this was a huge waste of money and a complete epic fail, however in the midst of all of it are some precise ladies in STEM, like Amanda Nguyen. Seeing her obtain her dream of visiting area is beautiful! Realizing she did it on a Bezos rocket is much less so. And it’s OK to really feel difficult about it.
As a result of actually, if anybody deserves to go to area, it’s Amanda Nguyen. The bioastronautics analysis scientist is understood for some fairly vital achievements, like being acknowledged as Time Woman of the Year in 2022. She’s the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights group. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
She additionally drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, a invoice that handed unanimously in 2016 and utterly overhauled the best way sexual assaults have been reported, lessening the burden on victims.
The invoice got here after Nguyen was raped in 2013 whereas she was a pupil at Harvard College. She had already accomplished an internship at NASA in 2011 and 2013 and dreamed of changing into an astronaut, however after her assault, Nguyen took a 10-year break from her area goals to pursue the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act and create and develop Rise.
So yeah, seeing her come out of the shuttle along with her arms stretched to the sky? It felt like a full-circle unhealthy*ss second. Nguyen wrote on Instagram that she determined to carry her hospital bracelet from the evening she reported her rape as her zero-g indicator on board the shuttle — the merchandise she’d have in her pocket to let her know when microgravity situations start. She shared that it was like letting her ache see the world she had been dreaming of, letting her ache see the world she had modified.
It’s deeply transferring. And figuring out that Nguyen has constructed a legacy off of her trauma and ache, turning what occurred to her into this unbelievable internet of help and sources and alter for different survivors, is large. After all she deserves to go to area. After all she will get to have her goals realized.
However… *sigh.* It’s exhausting to not really feel difficult about it, figuring out that the Blue Origin flight additionally had celebrities on it who paid a complete lot of cash to Bezos for a PR stunt. Realizing the climate impact that 11-minute flight had on our world. Realizing that Bezos has been a fairly dominant supporter of Trump, and Trump’s administration is dismantling science left and proper (actually, feminine scientists are actively losing their jobs and being scrubbed from government websites).
But, there’s one thing there. Nguyen did handle to do some experiments whereas she was on board Blue Origin, together with work that will affect women’s health in space, like space-friendly pads and tampons. She is the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space. Her household, coming to this nation as refugees and on the lookout for peace and development and goals, watched her launch off in a rocket.
There’s a lot to be pleased with for Nguyen. She’s a survivor, constructing a greater world for all of us due to one thing horrible that occurred to her. She deserves all the nice issues. She deserves to see Earth as a tiny speck. She deserves her goals to return true.
I feel all of us simply want it wasn’t on a Bezos shuttle.
Should you or somebody you understand has been sexually assaulted, you possibly can name the Nationwide Sexual Assault Phone Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to hotline.rainn.org.
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