The flight of everyone’s favorite fuckboy has been canceled. Pete Davidson will no longer be taking a seat on Jeff Bezos’ next, and fourth, passenger flight with his Blue Origin rocket program. Blue Origin tweeted out a statement on March 17, announcing that the launch date had been pushed back from March 23 to March 29, and Pete Davidson would no longer be the sixth passenger. And while there are many questions, the biggest one is what in the good fuck would keep you from going to space — even with a minor scheduling change. What product launch does Kim Kardashian have scheduled that Pete can’t miss? Which little cousin’s graduation might it be? Personally, I don’t care if it’s my brother’s wedding — my ass would be on that rocket.
The passengers still going on the flight as part of the New Shepard program are listed as Marty Allen, Jim Kitchen, Dr. George Nield, and husband-and-wife duo Sharon and Marc Hagle. It’s still unknown what it costs to go on a space tourism flight with Blue Origin — they’ve yet to release pricing, but Bezos also stated that they’re “doing really well with private sales.” What we do know though is that for the first, widely mocked crewed mission last July — the one that Jeff Bezos wore a cowboy hat for, and which launched a thousand penis memes — one of the seats was auctioned off for $28 million to someone who also had to cancel because of scheduling conflicts. File under: rich people... they’re not just like us.
The recreational flights to space have been a source of controversy. First, there was just the general disgust at the opulence of it all. There’s a special place in hell for people with the money and technology to drastically shift any of our myriad humanitarian crises for the better, but who instead decide space tourism as the hill they want to die on. It was also hard to not be grossed out by the billionaire pissing contest that happened last summer when Richard Branson beat Bezos to space by nine days on his own passenger flight on Virgin Galactic. The biggest issue, though, is that space tourism has a giant environmental impact — but of course, people will continue to go until the earth rids herself of the parasite that is us. But for now, Pete Davidson will not be one of them. And I’m also just happy that he’s making a headline that has nothing to do with the artist formerly known as Kanye West. May this be a trend.
