Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Pledges to Expand His Space Ventures
27 May 2018 - 2:07AM
Dow Jones News
By Andy Pasztor
LOS ANGELES -- Amazon.com Inc. founder and Chief Executive Jeff
Bezos vowed to use his rocket startup to develop robotic rovers and
perhaps human habitats on the moon's surface, even if such projects
fail to win financial support from the U.S. government.
In a personal, wide-ranging talk at a space conference here
Friday, Mr. Bezos laid out his vision for lunar exploration and
eventual settlement. Depicting such efforts as a matter of
long-term human survival, he said: "This is not something that we
may choose to do; this is something we must do."
Without divulging details about the new generations of powerful
rockets, spacecraft and landing vehicles he envisions will be
necessary to establish such permanent outposts, Mr. Bezos made an
impassioned argument for accelerating private space travel. He
argued that future generations won't be able to survive on earth
without expanding into other parts of the solar system.
"The alternative is stasis," he said, adding that without space
settlements, societies around the globe "will have to stop growing"
due to environmental and other constraints. "That's not the future
that I want for my grandchildren, or my grandchildren's
grandchildren."
Mr. Bezos called the efforts of his rocket company, Blue Origin
LLC, "the most important work I am doing." The speech was delivered
at the annual meeting of the National Space Society, a nonprofit
group championing space colonies.
A self-described space geek and lifelong reader of science
fiction novels, Mr. Bezos in the past has talked about his
determination to play a big part in creating building blocks to
usher in supercheap, reliable and frequent transportation beyond
the atmosphere.
Like fellow billionaire Elon Musk, the founder and head of Space
Exploration Technologies Corp., Mr. Bezos has talked about
developing the infrastructure to eventually move millions of people
into space and transform launches of reusable rockets into trips as
routine as airline travel.
But Mr. Bezos's latest comments were unusually stark in saying
that to maintain economic vitality, "we will have to leave this
planet" and "we don't have a lot of time" to map out a step-by-step
approach, starting with reduced launch costs.
"It won't be done by one company" or by just the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, Mr. Bezos said, but instead
will require "thousands of companies working in concert over many
decades."
On a practical and political level, arguments advanced by Mr.
Bezos support President Donald Trump's focus of relying on
public-private partnerships for space exploration, including
building landing craft able to take experiments -- and within a few
years astronauts -- to the lunar surface.
"We must go back to the moon, and this time to stay," Mr. Bezos
said, echoing one of the White House's principles for establishing
sustainable outposts.
Even before the Trump administration came into office, Blue
Origin proposed that NASA help fund it to pursue a fledgling
program designed to send robotic spacecraft to the moon. Other
companies also are developing similar projects, and NASA is
soliciting ideas for various sizes of landers.
On his own, Mr. Bezos has sold roughly $1 billion of Amazon
stock annually to invest in Blue Origin, which hopes to start
offering suborbital space tourism flights by 2019. The fast
growing, closely held company also is developing two larger rockets
aimed at carrying satellites and spacecraft into earth orbit and
beyond.
Noting that for the foreseeable future, "very few people are
going to want to abandon earth altogether," he said liquid-fueled
rockets able to be flown 100 times or more with minimal maintenance
are vital for a new and affordable transportation model.
Responding to questions about his commitment to pursue human
space travel regardless of federal support, Amazon's CEO joked that
either "other people will take over the vision, or I will run out
of money."
But he ended the talk on a more serious note by reiterating his
view that moon exploration is an essential step toward transporting
humans to Mars and allowing them to create habitats on the Red
Planet. Such gradual efforts are the only way to avoid a repeat of
earlier policy mistakes, he said, which saw the Apollo astronauts
land on the moon but then morphed into five decades without any
more human missions there.
"I don't like to skip steps," he said, explaining that trying to
take people directly to Mars would be futile. "There would be a
ticker-tape parade and then 50 years of nothing."
Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 26, 2018 11:52 ET (15:52 GMT)
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