So, Gayle King, Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez reveled in their nearly 11-minute ride aboard one of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space-tourism rockets Monday morning, and even got to experience some brief moments of weightlessness during what has been been touted as a “historic” flight because of its all-female crew.

“It is the highest high,” Perry proclaimed after their New Shepard capsule landed in the West Texas desert, Bezos face-planted while trying open the hatch, and the pop star dramatically kissed the ground.

But can she, King and Sanchez, Bezos’s fiancée, now call themselves “astronauts?”

Their fans have hailed them as such, so maybe it depends on whom you ask. But these celebrities definitely don’t meet the criteria established by NASA and don’t appear to meet all the guidelines listed under the FAA’s “Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program.”

Before and after Monday’s brief flight, 65 miles up into the sky and back, many online balked at anyone calling Perry, King or Sanchez astronauts. “They’re not astronauts,” one person wrote on X. “I think real astronauts would be offended at that. They’re celebrities (who) sat on their bums.”

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Gareth Dorrian, a space scientist from the University of Birmingham, echoed the view that the trip was nothing more than a thrill ride for some rich celebrities and advertising for the space-tourism company owned by Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder.

“Let’s call it what it is and not tell ourselves that it is contributing meaningfully to science or space exploration,” Dorrian said. “I am afraid I do still think these flights are essentially just joyrides for the super-rich.”

In its glowing coverage of the ride, CBS Mornings kept referring to King, the show’s co-anchor, and her two famous friends, as well as the three other women aboard, as “astronauts.”

But once back on earth, King said she was reluctant to accept the “astronaut” title, according to CNN — either because she was being modest or because she suspected it wouldn’t be proper. After all, the craft was fully automated, and she and the other passengers didn’t actually do anything to fly it. Some of the more cynical people online have likened their trip to a very pricey “amusement park ride.”

Ahead of the flight, Perry boasted to Elle magazine that she and her fellow crew members would put the “ass’ in astronaut.” During that interview, Perry and Sanchez also talked up how they would be donning make-up and eyelash extensions to make space “glam.” But as Slate writer Shannon Palus pointed out, Perry would be “putting the ‘ass’ in ‘passenger’ and little else.”

While the term “astronaut” derives from the Greek words meaning “star sailor,” three agencies in the United States get to officially say who is an astronaut, according to NBC News. They are NASA, the military and the FAA. NASA and the military reserve that designation for employees who meet specific criteria, with NASA only using the term for those selected to join “its corps of astronauts” and who make “star sailing” their career profession.

Meanwhile, the FAA has had to find an official way to apply the term in the age of commercial space flight, led by such companies as Bezos’s Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. In 2021, the FAA tightened its rules on who could be called astronauts and qualify for “astronaut wings program,” Slate and NBC News reported.

Under FAA rules, astronauts are those who fly 50 miles or more above the earth’s surface on an FAA-licensed or -permitted vehicle. Monday’s Blue Origin flight made it more than 62 miles above the earth’s surface, the so-called Kármán line, which Blue Origin and other organizations consider the boundary of where space starts.

But under FAA definitions, astronauts also must demonstrate “activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”

It’s debatable whether Perry, King or Sanchez engaged in such “activities” or made contributions to “human space flight safety.” The other passengers on Monday’s flight were former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, filmmaker Kerianne Flynn and activist Amanda Nguyen.

One way these women may have made “contributions” to human space flight was to use their celebrity to “get people’s attention” and to get the public “to learn a little bit more about the space program,” Michael Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University told CNN.

And, even if Perry, King, Sanchez and the others can’t really call themselves astronauts, they are still likely to get an FAA shout-out on its list of people who are “recognized for human space flight.” But as others have pointed out about commercial space flight, this list appears to be populated by people who are very rich, famous or well-connected.

Blue Origin revealed that some of the six passengers on Monday’s flight got to ride for free, but others paid to go along, CNN reported. Blue Origin refused to say who paid, and it has not revealed its ticket prices, but its chief competitor, Virgin Galactic, advertises ticket sales advertised ticket sales for between $250,000 and $450,000.

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