An all-female group, including pop star Katy Perry, went briefly to space for an 11-minute flight on Monday. The criticism that followed has lasted much longer. And it keeps on coming.

On Friday, lifestyle expert Martha Stewart posted video of her own 2007 zero-gravity flight on a Boeing 727 aircraft called G-Force One, using a caption that referenced one of Perry’s hit songs. 

Atop the video of Stewart doing flips in zero gravity, a caption read, «Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind?» That’s a line from Perry’s 2010 No. 1 hit song, Firework.

Stewart’s Instagram account also posted, «In case you spaced out in 2007, Martha has always been ahead of her time.»

Perry, author and former journalist Lauren Sanchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyễn, film producer Kerianne Flynn and CBS host Gayle King were on Blue Origin’s successful NS-31 flight this week.

The passengers rolled to the launchpad in Rivian electric trucks and took an elevator up to board the capsule. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, Sanchez’s fiancé, personally escorted them to the rocket. The flight lasted about 11 minutes. Perry sang What a Wonderful World during the flight, although choppy audio made it difficult to hear the women at times during the livestream.

This was the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo spaceflight in 1963. Tereshkova was the first woman in space.

Bezos was waiting to greet the crew at the landing site and apparently stepped in a small hole and fell, almost landing on his face. Social media replayed the moment over and over.

Wrote one X user, «Excuse me while I watch Jeff Bezos faceplant a million times.»

Criticism — and defense — of flight

The criticism began even before the women took off. On the Today show on April 3, actor Olivia Munn dissed the event.

«There are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,» Munn said on the show. «What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous.»

For some reason, fast-food chain Wendy’s, known for its witty tweets, took aim at Perry after she landed. First, Wendy’s tweeted, «Can we send her back?»

The company also tweeted a photo of Perry kissing the ground after returning to Earth and captioned it «I kissed the ground and i liked it.» (Perry’s 2008 song I Kissed a Girl contained the line «I kissed a girl and I liked it.»)

Then, when another X user asked, «She was only up there for like 10mins, right?» the Wendy’s account responded snarkily with, «don’t short change her it was 11 minutes.»

But the women defended their flight.

«I’m not going to let you steal our joy but most people are really excited and cheering us on and realize what this mission means to young women, young girls and boys too,» King said in a press conference after the return.

And Bowe, the aerospace engineer, defended the scientific part of the trip.

«We advanced science today,» Bowe said. «More people are going to be able to do meaningful research with Blue Origin because we collected data. And it wasn’t just plant biology — we studied human physiology, we contributed to the knowledge base of what people know about women. We are inspiring the world right now.» 

Watch Katy Perry visit space

The New Shepard spacecraft launched from West Texas at about 8:30 a.m. CT on Monday. Relive the mission through Blue Origin’s livestream replay on YouTube.

Does New Shepard reach space?

There’s an ongoing debate about what represents space. For example, everyone agrees the International Space Station is in space but commercial rocket rides like what Blue Origin operates fall into a gray zone. One benchmark is the Karman line, an imaginary line 62 miles above the Earth’s surface.

NASA recognizes that «there’s really no clear boundary between where Earth’s atmosphere ends and outer space begins» but says most scientists recognize the Karman line as the transition point to space. So unless you want to get into a nitpicky argument, Perry and the others made a brief visit to space during their flight.

The women experienced weightlessness after the spacecraft passed the Karman line. The return trip involved a gentle parachute-assisted landing of the capsule.

This was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program. Blue Origin has flown 52 people into space, including Star Trek’s William Shatner, Good Morning America host Michael Strahan and Bezos. 

Get ready for a new trip to a galaxy far, far away courtesy of a upcoming new Star Wars movie. Star Wars: Starfighter is scheduled for a May 2027 release. Ryan Gosling (yes, Ken from the Barbie movie) stars in the film, playing a brand new character for the franchise. We don’t know much about his role or the standalone film yet, though director Shawn Levy revealed a bit on Thursday during the Star Wars Celebration, a fan event in Japan.

«The movie is a new adventure. It’s new characters,» said Levy. «It takes place in a new period of time after the battle of Exegol, after episode nine.» 

Episode nine refers to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which came out in 2019, and the planet Exegol was the site of a battle during the war between the First Order and the Resistance

No one is surprised to see plans for a new Star Wars movie, given how the franchise has drastically expanded since Disney bought the franchise’s parent company, Lucasfilm, in 2012.  

Fans ready to move on from sequels

The new film has excited superfans like Jimmy «Mac» McInerney, host and producer of the Rebel Force Radio: Star Wars Podcast.

«Superfans like me will be there for anything Star Wars, but I really hope Levy and Gosling will pack the appropriate punch to excite the masses,» McInerney told CNET. «I’m also very optimistic that this will be a standalone story with a solid beginning, middle and end.»

The movie will be set around five years after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it won’t follow any of the main plot lines from past films. So it’s not a prequel or a sequel, it’s a new adventure. 

Mclnerney thinks the standalone nature of Star Wars: Starfighter might be a good thing.

«Sometimes Star Wars gets crushed under the weight of its existing lore, so it’s nice to know this will be a self-contained adventure,» he said. «This could provide fandom with a nice palate cleanser following the divisive sequel trilogy and propel the franchise into the future.»

For now, you can find all the Star Wars content your heart desires on the streaming service Disney+.

Tech company Razer made headlines earlier in April when it temporarily stopped selling all its laptops and the newly announced laptop stand. Although the company did not comment on the change, it seemed likely it was tied to President Donald Trump’s heavy tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

As of Friday, the Razer Blade 16 has reappeared on Razer’s website — kind of. The only model of the Razer Blade 16 for sale at this time is the one that comes with the Nvidia RTX 5080, an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, 2TB of storage and 64GB of RAM for $3,799. If you attempt to change any of those specs using Razer’s configurator, the website either throws a 404 error or says that the laptop with that particular configuration is still out of stock.

A representative for Razer did not respond to CNET’s request for comment.

Per The Verge, Razer has also altered its configurations. If you attempt to equip the Razer Blade 16 with an Nvidia RTX 5090, it locks the laptop into 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. However, review units that many reviewers used were equipped with an RTX 5090, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.

As of Friday, the 14- and 18-inch Razer laptops and the laptop stand are still listed as out of stock and attempting to use Razer’s configurator still throws errors. Customers will have to wait for the rest of the stock to reappear if they don’t want that one particular configuration of the Razer Blade 16. 

What changed?

At the time that online laptop sales were first paused, Trump was increasing China tariffs almost daily, culminating in a 145% tariff increase on Chinese goods as of last Friday.

The president’s stance seems to have softened a little since then. The administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from being affected by tariffs, which may account for Razer slowly bringing its laptop sales back online.

 The exemptions had other effects as well. Nintendo had initially delayed its Switch 2 pre-orders due to tariffs, and reversed course late this week with pre-orders now starting on April 24. 

Laptop maker Framework, which had increased prices due to the tariffs, also lowered prices on some of its laptops after the exemptions.