By otakuyassine3@gmail.com 
Some wealthy celebs love to spend their money on incredibly ridiculous things, and in recent years, that has included tickets to outer space. And with NASA facing extreme potential budget cuts (Ars Technica reported that the Trump administration’s proposed budget would cut the agency’s overall budget by nearly 20 percent, including reducing its science funding by almost half), it feels poignantly out-of-touch to be shelling out a reported $600,000 for a seat on a Virgin Galatic flight or $1 million for a seat with Blue Origin (per Space Insider).
Here are 11 famous people who’ve flown in space:
1.
In April 2025, Katy Perry joined the first all-female space flight, spending approximately four minutes in space with Blue Origin. Per Sky News, she said, “I feel super connected to love. So connected to love. I think this experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you. Like, how much love you have to give and how loved you are until the day you launch…I think that it’s not about me. It’s not about singing my songs. It’s about a collective energy in there. It’s about us. It’s about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging. And it’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of earth…This experience is second to being a mom.”
2.
Gayle King was aboard the same space flight as Katy Perry. Per CBS News, after landing, she said, “I am so proud of me right now. This was not a ride. What happened to us — this was a bona fide freakin’ flight.” She also said, “You look down at the planet and you think that’s where we came from? To me, it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better, be better.”
Responding to criticism of the flight, she told People, “Anybody that’s criticizing it doesn’t really understand what is happening here. We can all speak to the response we’re getting from young women, from young girls about what this represents.”
3.
Per E! News, journalist Lauren Sánchez, who led the all-female flight crew, told Blue Origin, “All the love that was in that capsule, and all the heart and the feelings, and seeing Jeff [Bezos, her fiancé] before I left, I just…I had to come back. I mean, we’re getting married! If I didn’t come back, that would be a bummer for me.”
She also told People, “I get really fired up [by criticis]. I would love to have them come to Blue Origin and see the thousands of employees that don’t just work here, but they put their heart and soul into this vehicle. They love their work, and they love the mission, and it’s a big deal for them. So when we hear comments like that, I just say, ‘Trust me. Come with me. I’ll show you what this is about, and it’s, it’s really eye-opening.'”
4.
Film producer Kerianne Flynn, who’s known for working on The Automatic Hate, This Changes Everything, and Lilly, was also part of the Blue Origin all-female crew. Per 11Alive, she said, “I have almost no words. It was the most incredible experience of my life to be up there and see the…such vast darkness in space and look down on our planet. The moon was so beautiful…I felt like that was a special gift just for me.”
5.
In 2021, William Shatner flew to space with Blue Origin. In his book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, he wrote, “I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things — that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film Contact, when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, ‘They should’ve sent a poet.’ I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered.”
He continued, “The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Eearth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna… things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
“I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the ‘Overview Effect’ and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: ‘There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity,'” he wrote.
“It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware — not only of our insignificance but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance,” he concluded.
6.
Michael Strahan also took a space flight with Blue Origin in 2021. He told ABC News, “It’s such — almost like an out-of-body experience. It’s hard to even believe it happened. It’s a crazy feeling, like the feeling of weightlessness, the feeling when the booster goes off, the rocket goes off, and it detaches and you don’t know what’s up from down. And your body just goes like this, and you take off a seatbelt, but naturally, it feels natural to move.”
7.
In 2021, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson took his first trip to space. He told Today, “I’ve always dreamt about what it would be like to be in space looking back at this incredible earth. It’s impossible to describe just how magnificent it is.”
He also shrugged off criticism that space tourism is at odds with batling climate change, telling the BBC, “Communication between people is being transformed because of space travel and satellites up there. Monitoring things like the depredation of rainforests and illegal fishing…[there are] all these kinds of benefits that come from space travel.”
8.
Later that same month, fellow billioniare and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos joined the company’s inaugural launch into space. According to AP News, he called it the “best day ever” and later said, “My expectations were high, and they were dramatically exceeded.”
9.
Coby Cotton, a member of the YouTube comedy group Dude Perfect, did a Blue Origin space flight in 2022. In a Dude Perfect video about his experience (which was sponsored by MoonDAO), he said, “That was absolutely insane…And then all of a sudden, it really is — it’s just black. Just this perfect circle, super bright layer of blue all the way around the earth. The biggest of all time shout out, MoonDAO. Truly the experience of a lifetime.”
10.
In 2025, Emily Calandrelli — aka The Space Gal, who’s a TV presenter, science communicator, engineer, and writer with over a million TikTok followers — took a Blue Origin flight, making her the 100th woman in space. In a YouTube video documenting her experience, she said, “Flying to space was something I had dreamed about and worked toward for two decades, and it was everything I hoped it would be and so much more.”
11.
And British Olympian John Goodwin, who competed as a canoeist at the 1972 Munich Games, took a Virgin Galactic space flight in 2023. He told Olympics.com, “I don’t set out to do these things. It just seems to be in my nature. To do something that very few other people have done… to have the opportunity was the appeal. I had a desire to go to space because it appealed to my adventurous nature.”
He bought his ticket for the company’s first commercial spaceflight all the way back in 2004. He paid $250,000 at the time.
And now, here are 10 celebs who reportedly bought tickets or got invited to fly to space, but have yet to go:
12.
In a 2013 tweet, Richard Branson confirmed that Justin Bieber and his manager at the time, Scooter Braun, had purchased Virgin Galatic tickets. He said, “Great to hear @justinbieber & @scooterbraun are latest @virgingalactic future astronauts. Congrats, see you up there!” According to the BBC, at the time, ticket cost $250,000 a pop.
13.
In 2013, the Hamilton Spectator reported that Rihanna allegedly spent $750,000 on three seats aboard a Virgin Galatic flight for herself, her little brother Rorrey, and a bodyguard.
15.
Per Space Week, in 2002, Lance Bass trained to be an astronaut in Star City, Russia. Both the Russian Space Program and NASA certified him, and he was scheduled to fly aboard a Soyuz capsule. However, NBC News reported that, towards the end of the year, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency announced that he’d been removed from the flight. It was because his team failed to find sponsors to contribute towards the approximately $20 million cost of his endeavor.
16.
Per Variety, at the 2014 amfAR auction, which supports AIDS research, Leonardo DiCaprio auctioned off a seat on a space flight with him. It sold for €700,000, which was close to $1 million at the time. According to Space.com, the Virgin Galactic flight was originally scheduled for 2015. The ticket was purchased by Russian millionaire Vasily Klyukin, who in 2014 told ABC News, “My plans of flying into space haven’t changed and I’m still going to do it with Virgin…Now I’m just waiting. I still dream to go to space.”
17.
Per HuffPost, in 2011, Newscore reported that James Cameron was the first person to splash out $150 million on a space flight ticket from the space tourism company Space Adventures.
18.
Per ABC News, Richard Branson reportedly gifted Kate Winslet a Virgin Galactic ticket when she married his nephew, Edward Abel Smith (née Ned RocknRoll) in 2012.
20.
In 2008, Paris Hilton reportedly bought a Virgin Galactic ticket. She told the Guardian, “I’m very scared to do it. What if I don’t come back? With the whole light-years thing, what if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead? I’ll be like, ‘Great. Now I have to start all over.'”
21.
And finally, Paris’s husband, Carter Reum, also bought a Virgin Galactic ticket. In a 2021 interview with Richard Branson on her YouTube channel, Paris said it was “exciting.”
What do you think about celebrities going into space? Would you go take a commercial spaceflight if you had the opportunity (or the funds)? Share your thoughts in the comments!