In recent op-eds and presentations, 34-year-old Amanda Nguyen, a scientist and civil rights activist, vividly describes her experiences. These thoughts followed her participation in an 11-minute Blue Origin suborbital space trip. This mission was headlined by pop superstar Katy Perry and journalist Lauren Sánchez, who is married to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos. It was a notable achievement, as Nguyen became the first Vietnamese woman to go to space.
Despite her landmark accomplishment, Nguyen experienced a brutal wave of retaliation following the flight, which she recalled to be a “tsunami of harassment.” The first all-female space trip since 1963 drew a torrent of vitriol. Nguyen now hopes to overcome that terrible emotional toll with the help of mighty spirits.
Nguyen’s journey hasn’t been all roses and puppies. Despite her initial aspirations of becoming an astronaut, her university experience and the trauma of rape caused her to delay working toward her dream. She spent the next decades leading a grassroots campaign to bring her daughter’s killer to justice. Outside of Congress, she’s a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist—a scientist who studies women’s health. Her commitment to advocacy and scientific research soared even higher on her inaugural flight with Blue Origin. Onboard, she performed hundreds of groundbreaking experiments that propelled her field forward.
The extreme backlash she faced after the flight resulted in a chronic depression. Nguyen revealed the extent of her struggles, stating, “I did not leave Texas for a week, unable to get out of bed.” She further recounted a troubling encounter with a senior staff member at Blue Origin, expressing her emotional state during that moment: “A month later, when a senior staff at Blue [Origin] called me, I had to hang up on him because I could not speak through my tears.”
In her closing remarks, Nguyen focused on the impact of the negativity on her hopes and dreams. In her moment, she unapologetically proclaimed that her dreams had been crushed beneath “an avalanche of misogyny.” This powerful remark highlights the systemic issues that women in her industry (and others) constantly face. The emotional toll of the harassment was profound, leading to an experience she described as an “onslaught no human brain has evolved to endure.”
Though their struggles are deep and devastating, Nguyen shared a vision of hope moving forward. Eight months after her experience, she saw a change. The fog of grief first started to clear signaling her journey, like that of many others, toward gradual and complete recovery. Her story is a tremendous testament to her resilience. It serves to celebrate the accomplishments of women while reminding us that barriers still exist for women in science and in public life.
