Jeff Bezos outlines vision of colonizing the solar system – The Space Reporter

At a celebration commemorating the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos argued for permanent settlements on the Moon and advocated colonization of the solar system as a means of making room for up to one trillion people.

Unlike other advocates for colonizing solar system worlds, Bezos does not base his position on the notion that humans need a new planet because Earth will someday be destroyed.

Instead, he sees it as a next step important to life on Earth.

We can harvest resources from asteroids, from Near-Earth Objects, and harvest solar energy from a much broader surface areaand continue to do amazing things. I want my grandchildrens grandchildren to be in a world of pioneering, exploration, and expansion throughout the solar system, he said.

Colonizing the solar system will free humanity from population concerns and open up resources capable of meeting up to one trillion peoples needs, Bezos emphasized.

Reusable rockets are the key to bringing down the expense of space travel and are a goal toward which Blue Origin is working, he noted.

An important step toward the larger goal of solar system colonization is returning to the Moon and establishing settlements on its poles to obtain water and gain access to solar power.

Its time for America to go back to the Moon, this time to stay. We know things about the Moon we didnt know back in the 1960s and 1970s, and with reusable rockets, we can do it affordably. We can get that done today, Bezos stated.

He also said he wants Blue Origin to operate a cargo service named Blue Moon, which would transport the supplies necessary for robots to build a human habitat on the Moon.

Blue Origin plans to take tourists to suborbital space with its New Shepard rocket but is also developing rockets capable of reaching orbit.

Bezos, who spoke on a stage at Cape Canaveral in front of the huge Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, was awarded the first annual Buzz Aldrin Innovation Award by Aldrins ShareSpace Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to inspiring and educating people about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.

Laurel Kornfeld is a freelance writer and amateur astronomer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science in astronomy from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program.

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Jeff Bezos outlines vision of colonizing the solar system - The Space Reporter