Will Moving Industry to Space Save the Earth? Jeff Bezos says YES!

Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos—who is also the owner of space company Blue Origin—announced that he wants to utilize the planet for what it does best: “keeping humans alive”

Earth is the only planet in our solar system that can support human life.

It seems like an obvious statement, but why do we treat our planet so poorly? We pollute the air, land, and sea, even though we harness to power and technology not too.

At an invite-only press event in Washington, D.C., Bezos announced a massive and innovative vision for the future in which “Earth is zoned residential and light industry,” with the heavy industry moving to space.

Bezo’s vision is ambitious and is currently facing many obstacles, the first being the cost. Getting something into orbit is very expensive, Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX, takes full advantage of its reusable Falcon rockets.

Blue Origin plans to do the same, with a massive heavy-lift rocket called New Glenn (named for astronaut and later senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth).

To date, Blue Origins has only been able to launch a reusable suborbital rocket called New Shepard (for a quick up and down dip into space). The 11 successful test missions did not feature any crew members, but Bezos pledges to launch humans by the end of the year.

Jeff Bezos revealed Blue Moon — a huge lunar lander that can transport 3.6 tons of cargo to the Moon’s surface. The craft has been in development for three years and will be used to shuttle scientific equipment and other payloads, maybe even humans.

This may be Bezo’s first step towards colonizing the moon, which can lead to his grand plan of industrializing space.

To conclude, Jeff Bezo’s is holding to his belief that, “if we can build the infrastructure, future generations can accomplish almost anything in space.”