Jeff Bezos lays out a plan for settling the Moon
One of the richest people on Earth, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the space company Blue Origin, will work with NASA and ESA to create a permanent human settlement on the Moon.
The mission is simple, save Earth from heavy Industry, and give Earth’s environment a breather from pollution and industrial waste.
And even if Blue Origin cannot achieve public-private partnerships, Bezos will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
He laid out his plan during a talk at the International Space Development Conference, in Los Angeles. Mr. Bezos said the Moon is “the ideal place to industrially decongest the Earth and preserve it as a habitat for humans.”
A BIG step to save Earth
In the short term, Blue Origin’s goal is to reduce the cost of space travel, initially with its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft and then with its New Glenn orbital-class rocket in the 2020s.
In the long term, Mr. Bezos’ vision is to pave the way for millions of people to work in space.
Those people could simply live and work on hollowed-out asteroids, a concept that was proposed decades ago by Gerard K. O’Neill, a Princeton physicist whose ideas about space settlement fueled Bezos’s passion for reaching this final frontier.
The Future looks bright
In the way that the multimillionaire businessman sees it, moving the heavy industry to space powered by solar energy is the only way to guarantee that our planet can cope with the growing demand for energy. Amazon’s CEO sees this as a big opportunity to help preserve Earths environment, and save it for future generations.
As many before him, Mr. Bezos concluded: “We will have to leave this planet.”
Leaving Earth is going to improve this planet. We are going to come and go, and the people who want to stay will stay.
He added how Earth is not a very good place for heavy industry.
“It is convenient for us at this time. But in the not too distant future, I am talking about decades, maybe 100 years, it will become easier to do many of the things we do now on Earth in space, because that way we will have a lot of energy,” he predicted.
It’s as if someone made sure we’d have everything we need on the moon, and we just need to figure out a way to get there and stay.
As he laid out his plans, Bezos defended the usefulness of the Moon saying that Earth’s faithful companion in space is conveniently located, and we can reach it in a matter of days using the right propulsion system.
Scientists have determined that the Moon has water ice deposits near the poles that could be treated and turned into drinking water, breathable air and fuel for rechargeable rockets.
“It’s almost as if someone has prepared this for us,” Bezos added.
To facilitate the return of man to the moon, Blue Origin has a lunar lander on the drawing boards that is designed to deliver 5 tons of cargo to the Moon’s surface.
That’s strong enough to be used to transport people, and with enough support, it could start flying in the mid-2020s.