Worker at McDonald’s at the age of 17, gone into space

Worker at McDonald’s at the age of 17, gone into space

Web Desk
June 5, 2022

Worker at McDonald’s at the age of 17, gone into space

Katya Echazarreta is the first Mexican-born woman to fly into space.
She was selected from thousands of applications to join this trip.
It provided a few minutes of weightlessness before parachute landing.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ company, launched its fifth batch of passengers to the edge of space, including the first Mexican-born lady to do so.

The 60-foot-tall suborbital rocket lifted off from Blue Origin’s West Texas facilities at 9:26 a.m. ET, transporting a group of six people to more than 62 miles above the Earth’s surface — widely considered to be the boundary of outer space — and providing them with a few minutes of weightlessness before parachute landing.

The majority of the passengers paid an unspecified amount for their seats. However, Katya Echazarreta, an engineer and scientific communicator from Guadalajara, Mexico, was chosen from a pool of thousands of applications by a group called Space for Humanity to join this trip. The organization’s purpose is to send “extraordinary leaders” to space and give them the opportunity to experience the overview effect, a phenomenon widely cited by astronauts who say that seeing the Earth from space gives them a dramatic shift in perspective.
According to Echazarreta, she experienced the overview effect “in my own way.”

“Looking down and seeing how everyone is down there, all of our past, all of our mistakes, all of our obstacles, everything — everything is there,” she said. “And the only thing I could think of when I came back down was that I need people to see this. I need Latinas to see this. And I think that it just completely reinforced my mission to continue getting primarily women and people of color up to space and doing whatever it is they want to do.”

Echazarreta is the first Mexican-born woman in space, and the second Mexican to do so after Rodolfo Neri Vela, a scientist who participated in one of NASA’s Space Shuttle flights in 1985.
She went to the United States with her family when she was seven years old, and she remembers feeling overwhelmed in a new environment where she didn’t understand the language, and a teacher warning her that she could have to be held back.

“It just really fueled me and I think ever since then, ever since the third grade, I kind of just went off and have not stopped,” Echazarreta recalled in an Instagram interview.

Echazarreta stated she was the main income for her family when she was 17 and 18 and worked at McDonald’s.

“I had sometimes up to four [jobs] at the same time, just to try to get through college because it was really important for me,” she said.

Echazarreta sailed with Evan Dick, an investor who had previously flown with Blue Origin in a December flight and was the first to become a return flier, on her Blue Origin flight on Saturday. Other passengers included Hamish Harding, the chairman of a jet brokerage company who lives in the United Arab Emirates; Jaison Robinson, the founder of a commercial real estate company; Victor Vescovo, the co-founder of a private equity investment firm; and Victor Correa Hespanha, a 28-year-old who secured his seat after purchasing an NFT from The Crypto Space Agency.