NEED TO COLONISE THE SPACE

NEED TO COLONISE THE SPACE

The 54 year old billionaire, Jeff Bezoss, speaking at the Space Development Conference in Los Angeles over the weekend made the argument that in order to protect Earth and allow the human species to continue growing, we need to move much of our industrial activity to the moon, or even asteroids.

“We will have to leave this planet,” he said, according to Geek Wire. “We’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better. We’ll come and go, and the people who want to stay, will stay.” He says a trillion people will live in space, there will be "a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts" and we'll develop other planets, leaving Earth a beautiful place to be. As humanity expands into space, the Earth will remain the crown jewel, says Bezos. "By the way, I believe that in that timeframe we will move all heavy industry off of Earth and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry. It will basically be a very beautiful planet," says Bezos. 

The US government has stated it wants to pursue sustainable outposts in space and the Trump administration has shown renewed interest in returning to the moon. The Amazon CEO expects US government funding to play a vital role in efforts to build habitats in space but said his rocket company, Blue Origin, would push on with its mission even if it doesn’t receive funding help from NASA.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has previously outlined his idea for sending humans to colonise Mars but Mr Bezos clearly thinks our planet’s moon is a better option for an initial outpost. As he pointed out during the conference talk, the moon is more conveniently located and reachable in just a couple of days with the right rocket.

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin successfully launched its New Shepard rocket for the first time in 2018 from its facility near Van Horn, Texas. The company hopes to send humans to space as early as this year, but CEO Bob Smith says that will only happen when the company is completely sure the travel will be safe. The fundamental first step in building a future where civilisation lives between Earth and space is to be able to use rockets more than once, says Bezos.