The richest man in the world and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is investing big in the development of space technologies through his aerospace company Blue Origin.
Earlier this year Bezos had also revealed his plans of sending man on moon by 2024. “It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay,” Bezos had said at the Walter E Washington Convention Center in Washington DC while unveiling a replica of Blue Moon – an unmanned lunar-lander that would ferry both astronauts and payloads to the lunar surface.
Prior to that, a report had suggested that Amazon was planning to launch over 3,000 satellites in space.
On being asked why Bezos is spending much of his fortune in space research he said, “Because I think it’s important. We are in the process of destroying this planet. I think it is important for this planet. I think it’s important for the dynamism of future generations. It is something I care deeply about. And it is something I have been thinking about all my life.”
He also said that developing space technologies was also important as it would help our civilisation to thrive. “We humans have to go to space if we are going to continue to have a thriving civilization.”
He added, “We have become big as a population, as a species, and this planet is relatively small. We see it in things like climate change and pollution and heavy industry. We are in the process of destroying this planet. And we have sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system – this is the good one. So, we have to preserve this planet.”
Bezos said that eventually the cost of manufacturing complex components in space and sending them back down to earth would go down such that all the pollution generating factories won’t be set up on the Earth. “And Earth can be zoned residential,” he added.
However, this would take hundreds of years. “I would think, kind of time frame of hundreds of years,” Bezos said.
Kudos on that thought Bezos!
