Amazon (NASDAQ: AMNZ) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the newly anointed “richest person in the world,” says we need to colonize the moon. And time is of the essence.
Bezos believes that humans will one day spend most of their time away from planet Earth. So, he’s keen to cash in on this vision by colonizing one of the key future locations of heavy industry: the moon.
Bezos spoke at the 2018 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles over the weekend. There, he made the argument that to protect Earth and allow the human race to continue growing, we need to move a lot of our industrial activity to the moon — or even asteroids, in some cases.
He said moving heavy industry into solar-powered space outposts is the only way to ensure that our planet will be able to cope with the rising demand for energy and the stresses of a growing population.
Bezos believes that this will happen in our lifetime because the human race has no other choice:
We will have to leave this planet. We’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.
The Earth is not a very good place to do heavy industry. It’s convenient for us right now. But in the not-too-distant future—I’m talking decades, maybe 100 years—it’ll start to be easier to do a lot of things that we currently do on Earth in space, because we’ll have so much energy.
Bezos went on to explain that he’s a big fan of the European Space Association’s (ESA’s) Moon Village:
The Moon Village concept has a nice property in that everybody basically just says, look, everybody builds their own lunar outpost, but let’s do it close to each other.
Bezos said this approach would encourage positive collaboration and exchange of resources. He joked, “That way, if you need a cup of sugar, you can go over to the European Union lunar outpost and say, ‘I got my powdered eggs, what have you got?'”
According to Bezos, the moon, with its confirmed deposits of water, is ideally constructed and located to serve as the first space city for humans.
Whether his plans come to life or not, Bezos seems certain that the future of heavy industry will be done in space.
He says the lunar surface is “almost like somebody set this up for us.” It has polar deposits of water ice that could be mined for everything from oxygen to rocket fuel and possibly rare resource deposits.
The e-commerce entrepreneur seemed excited by how scientists have discovered the existence of icy water near the poles within the past decade. The icy water from the polar ice deposits could theoretically be converted into hydrogen and oxygen from the polar ice deposits could be turned into drinkable water, breathable air, and propellants for reusable rockets.
Bezos added that Blue Origin’s, his private spaceflight company’s, offer to form a public-partner partnership with NASA remains open. The partnership would be to build a lunar lander that’s capable of carrying 5 tons of cargo in preparation for the arrival of humans.
But he interjected, “We’ll do that, even if NASA doesn’t do it … We could do it a lot faster if there were a partnership.”
He goes on to elaborate that he views Blue Origin’s role as primarily about lowering the cost of cargo delivery to space, rather than getting too involved in the construction of things like habitats. So, this would all set up the company to be a sort of Space Amazon for said Moon Village.
For billionaire leaders of industry, it’s become fashionable for them to use their means to push humanity toward the final frontier.
But competitors like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic seem to have the early advantage.
Blue Origin is still only testing its suborbital rockets.
But Bezos has also said he plans to liquidate $1 billion of his Amazon stock every year to fund his spaceflight company. And he doesn’t expect to run out of money anytime soon.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today