The Blue Origin Flight Was Fake Conspiracy Theories, Explained (and Debunked)

Being critical is one thing, but now there are conspiracy theories that the whole Blue Origin flight was fake. Hey, some people still think the moon landing was faked, so can we really be surprised?

Seriously, though. Some people are theorizing that the 11-minute voyage, which took six women— including Katy Perry and Gayle King—into space, was an elaborate hoax, and the theory has been spreading like wildfire on the internet, primarily on the Elon Musk-owned platform X. Even Azealia Banks has gotten in the thick of it.

To be clear, this theory is incorrect, and those six women really did voyage into space in a Blue Origin rocket, but where did this story come from? Let us attempt to explain in this edition of TL;DR.

Give me the TL;DR.

Shortly after the capsule from Blue Origin’s rocket, called New Shepard, landed, folks began posting their doubts on X (formerly Twitter). Many claimed the launch was “clearly” fake, and the posts haven’t stopped rolling in.

Wait, I need more. What’s the background here?

One moment that caught the internet’s attention was after the capsule landed and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Blue Origin, opened the hatch to let the six passengers out. A video of the moment seems to show the hatch door being first opened from within, and then shut again, before Bezos opened it. According to the commenters on the internet, the door shouldn’t have been able to open from the inside. However, according to NASA, hatch doors should be operable by a single crewmember, without tools, from both sides. It’s perfectly logical to assume that someone on the inside opened the door before they were supposed to, and closed it because it would have ruined a Bezos photo op, as explained in the Daily Mail.

But the hatch wasn’t the only thing that seemed fishy to certain internet users. Azealia Banks was suspicious of just how short the whole mission was. She tweeted, “I don’t think they even went to space that shit was fake af. How they back already it’s been like 40 mins.”