Australian space technology leader Dr Joni Sytsma praises all female Blue Origin flight for changing mindsets
Following the historic Blue Origin space flight, a leading Australian aerospace engineer has warned of the serious impacts coming if President Donald Trump continues his assault on diversity programs.
Toowoomba
Don't miss out on the headlines from Toowoomba. Followed categories will be added to My News.
On Tuesday, Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos’ twelfth Blue Origin rocket blasted into the ether, this time carrying the first all-female crew to enter space since 1963.
Australian aerospace engineer and chief technology officer of an $180 million space innovation program, Dr Joni Sytsma, said the flight was an impressive showcase of female strength, tenacity and prowess.
“This is what change for the better looks like,” Dr Sytsma said.
“This is another sign of women doing amazing things, women being amazing, and entering areas that have been traditionally extremely male-dominated.”
“To see six very strong and, yes, very wealthy women be astronauts, space leaders in this way, I think it’s something for all the women of the world to look at and be like, if I’m successful in my career, then I can do this too.”
The flight was notable in more ways than one: taking into account this latest launch, women only represent about 15 per cent of the more than 700 people to have travelled into space.
Dr Sytsma pushed back against nay-sayers critical of the recent Blue Origin flight, the twelfth crew to take flight in Blue Origin’s history and the first solely occupied by women, claiming the public slamming was blatant sexism.
“So when you have twelve flights, and suddenly it’s all women, and only then I’m seeing front page news of pushback, that’s just misogyny,” she said.
“It’s not really new, especially when this is flight twelve, to see tourist flights going off; this is, this is just a little standout in terms of it’s all women.
“They are clearly being role models in their respective day jobs; now this is one extra platform to be a role model to young women, because people need to have role models to look up to so they can set goals for the rest of their life.”
As an American-born transgender woman, Dr Sytsma offered a unique insight into the impact of the Trump administration’s push to remove diversity, equity and inclusion measures across the US, and its echoing effects on Australia.
“The reason it’s hard for women to get into these fields is the rampant misogyny, it’s because it’s a significantly male-dominated industry, and it’s hard when faces come in that don’t look like the faces you’ve ever seen before,” she said.
“I can say that Australia is a remarkably progressive nation that is reducing these barriers, not to say that they’re not there, but they are significantly reduced.
“(The Trump administration directives), those are all regressive and attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, you know, ‘women get back in your place, be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen please’.
“(If I was in the US) I could very easily see a letter come from the White House to the university that employs me saying ‘no DEI stuff’ and then they erase Joni, because it’s kind of hard to have me in front of people without the DEI message going out.”
“I’m being reached out to by queer folk and women and minorities in the space and manufacturing ecosystem of America and they’re like, ‘hey, can I get a job in Australia? How do I get out of this bad situation that I find myself living in?’.
“Things have already gotten bad very quickly and people are scared of how much worse it can get.”
Dr Sytsma warned policy changes in the US could also impact the global market, including Australia’s burgeoning space industry.
“I think while our country is going to be progressive and things are going to get better, we can’t view space in isolation from the space superpowers.
“The space effect in America right now is very chilling, particularly against women, LGBT folk, and people of colour.
“There’s going to be a lot of fallout over the years; I don’t know how it’s going to end up a decade from now, but at least right now, it looks very, very bad.”
Dr Sytsma now heads Australia’s Innovative Launch, Automation, Novel Materials, Communications, and Hypersonics Hub (iLAuNCH) program with the University of Southern Queensland, aimed at developing tangible technology products for the space industry to create jobs and growth for the future.
To avoid being left behind, she said Australia’s government needed to assure funding for more than just one political cycle.
“What I do see is each new party comes in, they have their own pet project and then that means initiatives that have been stood up by a previous government may be chopped, they may be allowed to carry on,” she said.
“I do see is this happens over and over again in the Australian innovation landscape is you get a project running – if it’s running well or poorly, that doesn’t seem to matter – the alignment between that next hit of funding and who’s giving it is so hard to achieve that it inherently breaks things that are going well.
“I’m talking about super hi-tech manufacturing, it does need consistent support so that these initiatives get over the valley of death.”
For Dr Sytsma, the Blue Origin flight and its implications for the space industry reinforces her excitement of what is to come next.
“This kind of a joke, but I’m actually pretty serious, the person I want to see next in space is the person I see in the mirror,” she said.
“2065 is my retirement date and I’m booking a two-week hotel on the moon.
“I think that’s what’s really exciting about the future is, you just saw a couple of extremely successful and wealthy people go up in space – you’re going to get closer and closer to average Sarah up there too.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Australian space technology leader Dr Joni Sytsma praises all female Blue Origin flight for changing mindsets
Mercy flight for man crushed by machinery on remote property
A man was seriously injured when he was crushed by machinery on a remote property on Queensland’s Western Downs on Monday night.
‘Cared passionately’: Late Pope remembered at St Pat’s requiem
Hundreds of Catholics joined our civic leaders to reflect on the life and teachings of the late pope.