Amanda Nguyen Experienced Depression After Backlash from Blue Origin Flight: ‘I Felt Like Collateral Damage’

Bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen, who was part of Blue Origin’s first all-female flight crew in April, is opening up about what happened after the round-trip expedition to the edge of space.

Nguyen became the first Vietnamese woman to go to space when she took part in historic Flight NS-31 made up of singer Katy Perry, broadcast journalist Gayle King, philanthropist Lauren Sánchez (wife of Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos), former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

The event sparked different reactions, with many celebrities speaking out about its cost and the privatization of space travel.

Nguyen said in a lengthy statement posted on Instagram on Sunday, December 28, that the “aftermath of the spaceflight” caused her to go into a deep depression that she recalled telling King “might last for years.”

She said she felt like her professional experience and dreams “were buried under an avalanche of misogyny.”

The astronaut said the “volume of coverage was unprecedented” and that, at scale, even a “small fraction of negativity becomes staggering.”

“It amounted to billions of hostile impressions — an onslaught no human brain has evolved to endure. I felt like collateral damage, my moment of justice mutilated,” she wrote.

Nguyen said she stayed in Texas for a week afterward because she couldn’t get out of bed — and that even a month later, she “could not speak through my tears.”

While she felt it was important to remain strong publicly, she also acknowledged that there “has been overwhelming good that has come out of this.”

“It’s been 8 months since then, and I’m glad that the fog of grief has started to lift,” she wrote. “Vietnam saved me. My friends who continually checked in on me saved me. The love of my community saved me. You all saved me.”

Nguyen said she appreciated those who took time “to uplift my research, my activism, and my story so it wouldn’t be overshadowed.”

“In my moments of deep grief this year, I reached back out to a familiar place, to her – my survivor self – who found the strength to fight. How horrible that I needed to deploy that skill once again,” Nguyen wrote.

From the experience, she said she learned that “we never fully leave behind our past selves,” but she’s proud to have “kept my promise” and stayed focused on “kindness” even through “the tusnami of harrasment.”

“It is the greatest gift this holiday season that I can feel the fog lifting,” Nguyen wrote. “I can tell Gayle it’s not going to take years.”