Blue Origin’s upcoming suborbital mission featuring a high-profile all-female crew—including singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King—is reigniting an old debate: where does space actually begin?
Scheduled for Monday, the flight will launch six passengers just past the Kármán line, an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles) widely recognized as the boundary of space. Passengers will enjoy a few moments of weightlessness before descending back to Earth. But experts say space isn’t just about altitude—it’s also about physics, purpose, and perception.
While Blue Origin’s New Shepard rockets consistently cross the 100-kilometer mark, rival Virgin Galactic’s flights peak around 88.5 kilometers (55 miles). Still, the U.S. government considers 50 miles (81 kilometers) the minimum requirement for awarding astronaut wings. The debate has even stirred rivalry: in 2021, Blue Origin posted on social media that “none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name”—a subtle jab at Virgin Galactic.
WATCH:
NEW: Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gail King & the rest of an all-female crew “express gratitude” to a Blue Origin rocket ahead of their launch.
Perry, Sanchez, King, Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, & Kerianne Flynn will be in space for 11 minutes.
Perry says they’re putting the “a$$”… pic.twitter.com/ARcug2ohwj
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 13, 2025
The origin of the Kármán line dates back to Hungarian-American physicist Theodore von Kármán, who proposed it as the altitude where aeronautics gives way to astronautics. But even his estimates varied, and modern research suggests the line fluctuates between 84 and 100 kilometers.
According to Spence Wise of Redwire Space, “somewhere between 90 kilometers and 88 kilometers, these rocket bodies, as they’re reentering (the atmosphere), stop acting like they’re mostly drifting in space … and they start just falling out of the sky.” He added that while space might begin at varying altitudes depending on the context, having a defined standard like the Kármán line is still useful. “We need these agreed-to norms or definitions of this hard and epic thing to do,” Wise said.
Defining an astronaut is equally murky. While NASA and the U.S. military used to award astronaut wings to anyone flying above 50 miles, the FAA discontinued that program in 2021, opting instead to simply list participants online. SpaceX, on the other hand, has handed out its own astronaut wings to civilians on its Crew Dragon orbital missions.
As former NASA astronaut Terry Virts once put it: “If you’re strapping your butt to a rocket, I think that’s worth something.” He added, “I think everybody’s going to know if you paid to be a passenger on a five-minute suborbital flight or if you’re the commander of an interplanetary space vehicle.”
In a world where commercial space travel is no longer science fiction, but science fact, the lines between tourist and astronaut—and Earth and space—may be more flexible than ever. But for now, Blue Origin’s next launch serves as a reminder: space, like definitions, depends on your perspective.
