Katy Perry is going to space — what could possibly go wrong?

What’s next, alien sex? Turns out, when Katy Perry and Kanye West collaborated on 2011’s “ET”, it wasn’t just an electropop ode to intergalactic impregnation — it was a prophecy. Some might consider it a warning. That’s right, fresh off her critically reviewed mega-flop comeback album, 143, Katy Perry is literally going into space. Why? Lauren Sánchez is getting married to Jeff Bezos, and instead of holding her hen do in Mykonos like any normal billionaire, the bride-to-be decided she would celebrate her final days as a single woman by launching the woman who wrote “Firework” into the stratosphere aboard a Blue Origin rocketship. Perry will be the 682nd person to go to space. She will also be the 682nd person with no Grammys to go to space. 

Sanchez is joining the “Peacock” singer and four other women on New Shepherd (named not for the second coming of Christ, but for Alan Shepherd, the first American in space). Journalist Gayle King, activist Amanda Nguyen, filmmaker Kerianne Flynn, and actual rocket scientist Aisha Bowe will also be taking this giant leap for womankind. When it comes to representation, this is actually very cool. It’s the first space mission made up only of female astronauts since Valentina Tereshkova went up there alone in 1963, and the statistics when it comes to women of colour going interstellar are disheartening to say the least. 

On the other hand, it’s optically pretty challenging for Katy Perry to say she’s bringing the “feminine divine” into the final frontier aboard a Jeff Bezos-owned rocketship, considering his support for the Trump administration, and everything happening there. On the other other hand, Katy Perry’s going to fucking space and that’s hilarious. But, while the erstwhile pop star probably won’t be looking for an alien to, quote, “infect me with your loving, fill me with your poison” because she’s happily engaged to Orlando Bloom, there are a host of catastrophes that could occur during her voyage into the depths of space. Maybe the bar up on Mars where they drive spaceships instead of cars doesn’t serve Perry’s non-alcoholic apertif, De Soi. Maybe Kayne West hangs out there. To celebrate the singer boldly going where no three-time Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award winner has gone before, here’s a list of everything that could possibly go wrong. 

She drops another album

The crew of the New Shepherd will only spend 11 minutes in space on their intergalactic hen do. You may not think that’s sufficient time for any enduring sociocultural catastrophe. But, by the sound of things, Perry didn’t spend much longer than that writing 143, and look how that turned out. Having already penned lyrics like “all my girlies pop off on the regular”, and “say the right thing, maybe you can be crawlin’ on me like a centipede” the songstress might struggle to top herself when it comes to international mediocrity, but heaven forbid the vastness of space inspire her to flop in the final frontier? In space, no one can hear you sing. Aboard New Shepherd, they might not be so fortunate. 

“All these women are storytellers,” Sánchez told Elle ahead of launch day. “They’re going to go up into space and be able to spread what they feel in different ways.”  If our first act of space diplomacy with a yet undiscovered, potentially hostile lifeform is a re-hashing of “Woman’s World”, then Houston, we have a problem.  

Catastrophic debris collision 

No, you’re right, this would be worse.

The death of a space nun 

“Katy Perry, please stop,” begged a nun. Then she died. So read the headline of a Washington Post article in 2018 after Sister Catherine Rose Holzman collapsed in court following a years-long legal dispute with both the “Ur So Gay” singer and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Láuren Sanchez’s soon-to-be husband owns the Washington Post, for what it’s worth. Plenty to discuss on reentry. 

The story is as follows: in 2015, Sister Holzman and her fellow sisters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary sold a mansion to a restaurateur named Dana Hollister. According to the archdiocese, this was completely out of order from the nuns, who did not have the right to offer up the 30,000sq ft property. In comes Katy Perry, whose purchase of the “Medieval-Spanish-Gothic-Tudor estate” was approved by the archdiocese, much to the chagrin of Sister Holzman. When the nun spoke to Billboard, as nuns so often do, she explained that “Katy Perry represents everything we don’t believe in. It would be a sin to sell to her.”

A year later, a judge agreed that the sisters’ sale was invalid, and that Hollister owed both the LA archdiocese and Perry millions of dollars worth of legal fees. Two years later, Sister Holzman appeared in court for a post-judgment hearing. Then she died. 

If the theory of parallel universes is correct — and, reader, it may well be — then somewhere in the cosmos there is a “Medieval-Spanish-Gothic-Tudor estate” owned by an intergalactic order of space nuns. Are the sisters prepared? What’s Martian for “Katy Perry, please stop?”

Lauren Sanchez wants carnations at the wedding 

Back in 2011, when Perry was touring Teenage Dream, and everything was okay in the world, her concert rider list leaked. Finally, Kitty Kats everywhere were made privy to the on-the-road demands of the woman who had released arguably the greatest pop album of all time. What did Katy Perry want in her dressing room? It had to be “piped and draped in cream or soft pink”, for one. As for amenities: one six foot banquet table (difficult to fit on a spaceship), one coffee table (‘perspex modern style’), two floor lamps (‘french ornate style’), and an arrangement of fresh flowers consisting of pink, white and purple hydrangeas, pink and white roses and peonies, and (in caps, underlined) ABSOLUTELY NO CARNATIONS. 

There is real rage here, some sort of life-alteringly traumatic association with the flower that means Katy Perry can categorically never be brought into contact with them again. Perhaps she’s been brainwashed, and the smell of carnations activates some repressed sleeper agent kill switch. 

Carnations, apparently, symbolise socialism, the overthrow of the authoritarian Estado Novo reigime in Portugal, and true love — so it’s unlikely Sanchez and Bezos will have them in the bouquet for the wedding. But can you imagine if, 100km above the ground, Katy Perry catches a whiff of carnations and the transformation begins? 

The collapse of the feminist movement

Because who else will drive a monster truck with a bedazzled uterus hanging from the rearview mirror in the name of women’s rights? Simone de Beauvoir? I don’t think so. 

The left-behind become hideously ugly 

Katy Perry issued a powerful statement of intent in Elle — “Space is going to finally be glam. Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the “ass” in astronaut.” If not her, who? If not now, when? Galactic glutes aside, Perry may well have perfectly innocent intentions here, may simply wish that she could bring a hair and makeup team into orbit in order to queen out from outer space. Quite right. But what if she meant Glam with a capital G? What if Katy Perry, reverse Prometheus-like, flew to space and stole from earth the very Platonic Form of Glamour itself? Starved of our ability to serve, the human race would be reduced to bland, drab, shuffling shells of blah. Who would wear a 500ft dress with the entire lyrics to “Woman’s World” scrawled over a 500ft train? Ubi sunt the sexy, the confident?

Earth is plunged into an ice age

In the geopolitical call to arms that is “California Girls”, Perry very clearly states that her sun-kissed skin is so hot it will “melt your popsicle”. This leaves a fairly wide range for the amount of heat energy that she actually gives off — anywhere upwards of roughly 16kJ, depending on the size of the popiscle(!). Based on this information, there is a slim but not zero chance that the heat radiating from Katy Perry is actually so strong that it is the only thing maintaining global temperatures. When she jets into orbit, then, the earth may find itself chilled into an arctic winter until her return.

This one isn’t too dangerous, though, what with the whole carbon emissions thing that comes with the whole space tourism thing. Sure, this particular flight won’t warm the planet enough to doom us all, but rocketship launches send gigatonnes of soot and chlorine, and other nasty stuff straight into the atmosphere, so maybe the climate disaster will heat us up in Katy’s absence. It’s hot and it’s cold, she’s up and she’s down. 

She collaborates with Dr Luke 

God, can you imagine?