Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, believes we should create a moon colony.
The Blue Origin Founder has been investing extensively in space exploration.
Moving Heavy Industry Off-Planet
Jeff Bezos, best known for having founded both Amazon and Blue Planet, is investing – and speaking about – space exploration to a growing extent. He feels that it will be important to move a great deal of the Earth’s heavy industry off-planet. That being the case, the billionaire feels that the moon – being the closest neighbouring world – makes sense as a home for that purpose.
In that way, the Earth itself could be used mainly for residential purposes as opposed to industrial ones, says Bezos. He believes that the years to come will have us watching significant amounts of our heavy industry heading to the Moon, as well as other planets, moons and asteroids. He described what will be left on Earth as being “residential and light industrial.”
Getting Off the Earth
Bezos is seeking to arrive at that future by partnering Blue Origin, a rocket company, with NASA and the European Space Agency. Together, the group would form a Moon colony. Bezos described this plan at a space conference.
In fact, Amazon’s CEO even described the process of creating a colony on the moon as being relatively easy. Since it already has a water supply and is quite close to Earth, it would provide a natural first off-world colonization location.
Seeking Additional Participation
Bezos hopes it won’t be too long before additional organisations decide to join in with the colonization project. This would make it faster and easier to form places for people to live in the lunar colony. That said, he also acknowledged that if others don’t decide to take part early enough, his own company will be willing to assist.
Over the short term, Bezos and Blue Origin intend to work on decreasing the cost associated with travelling into space in the first place. They will also soon begin launching ships for the purpose of designing rockets capable of carrying people to space. Its goal will be to transport people and goods to nearby locations in space. This differentiates it from Elon Musk’s SpaceX mission to eventually head to Mars.