And also a layup for Laz.
Posted on 06/03/2022 6:41:00 PM PDT by American Number 181269513
Growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, Katya Echazarreta was encouraged to abandon her dreams of traveling to space.
“Everyone around me — family, friends, teachers — I just kept hearing the same thing: That’s not for you,” Echazarreta told The Associated Press.
Echazarreta, 26, will prove them wrong Saturday when she joins a diverse international crew boarding the fifth passenger flight by Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space travel venture.
She and five others, including Victor Correa Hespanha, the second Brazilian to fly to space, will blast off from Texas atop a New Shepard rocket for a 10-minute flight. The automated flight should reach an altitude of roughly 66 miles (106 kilometers) before parachuting into the desert.
Echazarreta, whose flight is sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity, will be the first Mexican-born woman and one of the youngest women to fly to space. She was chosen from more than 7,000 applicants in more than 100 countries.
The flight comes as Blue Origin competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic for space tourism dollars and efforts aimed to increase diversity in space travel, which long has been dominated by white men.
Of the more than 600 people who have been to space since Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight in 1961, fewer than 80 have been women and fewer than three dozen have been Black, Indigenous or Latino.
In April, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins arrived at the International Space Station, the first Black woman assigned a long-duration mission there.
Earlier this year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the agency’s first-ever equity plan “to further identify and remove the barriers that limit opportunity in underserved and underrepresented communities.”
And also a layup for Laz.
So basically, space tourists.
Doesn't matter to me so long as she stays IN MEXICO.
And?
But is she a lesbian? That’s the only thing that matters.
Yep
A space tourist..
Here’s your participation trophy.
In the meritocratic past, the "barrier" was being an exceptional six-sigma engineer, physicist, chemist or pilot.
Nelson is going to get rid of those outdated anachronistic barriers and substitute skin color, sexual orientation, whether you chopped off your dick or boobs, your preferred pronouns and if you worship moon rocks.
A ten minute flight barely over 100 KM. Would be more meaningful if it actually orbited the earth. Really not much different than going up in a hot air balloon, which is a whole lot cheaper and lasts a lot longer.
Everyone the goes up in bezos Pennsylvania rocket is just passenger looking out a window.. not a true ballistic suborbital flight more like a high powered model rocket flight
the first!
only 131 million to go
finally a solution to illegal immigration
i crack myself up
The X-15 made a bit higher than that. But that was over 50 years ago and done by white men.
https://youtu.be/TuJXax0hh8I
nice astronaut suit
“diverse international crew” *barf*
As you said, she’s a space tourist.
Her happenstance of coming from Mexico is what is being celebrated, not any achievements. And she doesn’t even “get” that.
Oh no! (Illegal) aliens from space!
HA! Good one.
but she can’t do the two step.. When will the first two stepper go to space. Or better yet when wil the first mummer go to space. I’m waiting.
Ayyyyy! Abondigas!
I don’t think that counts as “flying in space”...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.