Conspiracy theorists claim to have found “definitive proof” that Blue Origin’s all-female space flight was staged after footage emerged of an apparent gaffe made during the landing.
The group of women, which included pop star Katy Perry and co-host of CBS Mornings Gayle King, blasted off on Monday for an 11-minute trip to the stars onboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard NS-31 capsule.
After the capsule touched-down in West Texas upon completing the flight, Bezos himself enthusiastically opened the hatch to welcome the women, including his fiancée Lauren Sánchez, back to Earth using a specialized custom-made tool.
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But footage captured just minutes earlier shows the hatch opening from the inside before being hastily slammed shut, which has been pounced on by naysayers as proof that the entire mission was staged.
“I’d say this is the nail in the coffin. FAKE!” one skeptic posted on X.
Another argued: “It was fake. The girls opened the door to begin with from the inside with no tools. They then waited a few minutes, and Jeff Bezos stepped up with some sort of tool and acted like he unlocked the latch.”
Another commenter added: “Can’t post this fake s--t enough. Door opens from the inside, they’re told to close it because the door can ONLY be opened by an outside person.”
Meanwhile, another commenter pointed out: “The trip was faked. Aside from the faked door opening by Overlord Bezos, the paint on the capsule isn’t even slightly scorched from re-entry.”
Spacecraft typically require outward-opening doors to protect passengers from pressurization upon re-entry, and require a team of technicians working from the outside to unlock.
But outward-facing doors are not a hard rule either. In fact, ever since the Apollo 1 disaster, which saw the capsule burst into flames on the launch pad, killing all onboard, it has been standard practice to ensure the doors open from both sides.
Likewise, the Blue Origin crew hit a maximum altitude of 66.5 miles during their journey, which just put them over the Karman Line, the official boundary of space. The altitude meant the capsule was still in an extremely thin layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and never made it into the vacuum of space, which meant the craft would not be damaged by re-entry.
Dr. Daniel Jolley, a conspiracy specialist at the University of Nottingham, told the MailOnline: “Space is vast, complex and largely inaccessible to most people—in this context, it becomes easier for some individuals to question the official narrative.”
Explaining how the Blue Origin became a “perfect storm” for conspiracies, he added, “Space missions have historically attracted skepticism—from moon landing denial to flat Earth claims—while celebrities are frequently drawn into narratives involving secret societies and hidden agendas.”
