Jeff Bezos says humans will live in massive space stations before settling on other planets, once again veering away from Elon Musk's Mars ambitions
Lloyd Lee
Thu, December 14, 2023
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk both have ambitions of space colonization.
But the billionaires disagree on how exactly that future will play out.
Bezos said in an interview that "planetary surfaces" are too small for mass human colonization.
Jeff Bezos said in a recent interview that he hopes for a distant future in which "a trillion" humans will inhabit the solar system, but the only way to get there is with massive space stations.
The Amazon and Blue Origin founder said on the Lex Fridman podcast published Thursday that a trillion humans would mean there could be a "thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins" at any given point — a vision he previously shared in a 2018 interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company Axel Springer.
Our solar system has enough resources to support a civilization that large, Bezos said, but people won't be inhabiting other planets.
"The only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations, he said. "The planetary surfaces are just way too small unless you turn them into giant space stations."
Bezos said that humans will take resources from planets or the moon to support life on space colonies that resemble cylindrical space stations envisioned by the late physicist Gerard Kitchen O'Neill.
"They have a lot of advantages over planetary surfaces. You can spin them to get normal earth gravity. You can put them where you want them," he said of O'Neill-style colonies, adding that most people are going to want to live near Earth anyway.
Bezos's space colony agenda is notable in that it differs from his main competitor, SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Bezos doesn't explicitly mention Musk in his answer to Fridman, but the two billionaires have butted heads in the past over what the future of space colonization will look like.
Musk has repeatedly spoken about his ambitions to colonize Mars, claiming that he wants to start building human settlements as soon as 2050.
SpaceX also has plans to help NASA send humans to the moon for the first time in 1972, but its colonization goals are mostly focused on Mars.
Bezos on the other hand has set his target on the moon, unveiling the giant Blue Moon lunar lander concept in 2019 that will help humans get there. He also has previously spoken about O'Neill-style space cylinders that can maintain a good climate all year long.
As the two battle over colonization, Musk apparently longs for a competitive space race, saying that he wished Bezos "would get out of his hot tub and yacht" and focus more on Blue Origin, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson.
Spokespersons for Blue Origin and SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment sent outside of working hours.
Experts previously told Business Insider about the scientific and ethical dilemmas that lie in both billionaires' grandiose plans of space colonization, including the problems with gravity and space's impact on the human immune system. But that doesn't mean their efforts are worthless.
"As a species, we've got to do this. We're going to crucify this planet sooner or later. So you might as well die going to Mars," Kevin Moffat, an associate professor at the University of Warwick who specializes in human physiology, told BI.
Bezos told Fridman that, in the future, humans will be able to choose to go back and forth between space stations and Earth, and that space colonization is ultimately a means to preserve the planet.
"We've sent robotic probes to all the planets," he said. "We know that this is the good one."
Jeff Bezos says the main reason he left Amazon was to focus on Blue Origin
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Thu, December 14, 2023
Jeff Bezos says he gave up his post as Amazon CEO because he wanted to focus on Blue Origin.
Bezos founded the rocket company back in 2000.
He told podcaster Lex Fridman that most of his time is now spent on Blue Origin.
It's been two years since Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO. In that time, it appears he's kept himself busy with real estate acquisitions and getting swole.
But the billionaire says his departure from the tech company was because he wanted to focus on his rocket company, Blue Origin.
"I've turned the CEO role over, and the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Blue Origin, adding some energy, some sense of urgency," Bezos said on the latest episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast," which went live on Thursday.
Bezos founded Amazon back in 1994. He stepped down as CEO in July 2021 but retained his position as the company's executive chairman.
The move, according to Bezos, had to be made because the rocket company needed to move faster. Bezos told Fridman that he wouldn't have the bandwidth to manage Blue Origin if he was still running Amazon.
"When I was the CEO of Amazon, my point of view on this is, 'If I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company, it's going to get my full attention.' And it's just how I think about things," Bezos said earlier in the podcast.
"It was very important to me. I felt I had an obligation to all the stakeholders at Amazon to do that," he continued,
Bezos now says he's spending most of his time at Blue Origin and has "never worked harder."
"I am working so hard, and I'm mostly enjoying it, but there are also some very painful days," Bezos told Fridman about his current workdays after stepping down as Amazon's CEO.
"Most of my time is spent on Blue Origin and I'm so deeply involved here now for the last couple of years," Bezos told Fridman. "And in the big, I love it, and the small, there's all the frustrations that come along with everything."
Blue Origin, which was founded by Bezos in 2000, has been competing against rivals such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The company has developed three space vehicles thus far — the New Shepard, New Glenn, and Blue Moon.
On Tuesday, Blue Origin said it was looking to launch the New Shepard rocket into Space next week. The rocket had been grounded since September 2022 after a mid-flight failure occurred during a mission.
Representatives for Blue Origin and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
Jeff Bezos is using his Amazon lessons to boost Blue Origin as it chases Elon Musk’s SpaceX—and courting controversy along the way
Steve Mollman
Fri, December 15, 2023
Jeff Bezos wants his space cargo and tourism venture Blue Origin to move faster—much faster—as Elon Musk’s SpaceX notches one win after another.
The space rivalry between the two billionaires has been well documented. But in a long interview with the Lex Fridman Podcast posted Thursday, the Amazon founder struck a diplomatic note, acknowledging that if Musk were not a “capable leader,” building SpaceX and Tesla would be “impossible.”
Instead, Bezos spoke more about his own leadership approach at Blue Origin, saying that the “primary reason” he resigned a few years ago as CEO at Amazon—where he’s now executive chairman—was to add “some sense of urgency” to the space business he founded 23 years ago.
One way Bezos intends to accelerate Blue Origin is to speed up decision making. Whereas Amazon’s goal is to be “the world's most customer-obsessed company," he said, Blue Origin is “going to become the world’s most decisive company.”
Amazon lessons for Blue Origin
To get there, he’ll apply lessons he learned while leading Amazon for decades. Bezos described for instance the difference between two-way-door decisions and one-way-door decisions. The latter are “irreversible” and “should be elevated up to the senior executives, who should slow them down and make sure the right thing is being done.”
By way of example, he said, Blue Origin changing its mind about which propellants to use in a space vehicle’s different stages “would be a very big setback, so that’s the kind of decision you scrutinize very, very carefully.”
But mostly companies encounter two-way-door decisions, Bezos said, where if it turns out to be the wrong choice, “you can come back in and pick another door.” These decisions should be made quickly by individuals or “very small teams deep in the organization…in the full understanding that you can always change your mind.”
He’s also applying lessons learned about two “really bad” ways to reach an agreement at a company. One is compromise, where disagreeing parties settle on something that isn’t true in order to move on. For example, if they disagree on how high the ceiling is, he said, with one saying it’s 12 feet high and the other saying it’s 11, they might compromise with 11.5 feet—instead of using a tape measure to determine the actual truth.
The other mistake, which happens all the time, Bezos said, is to resolve the disagreement by “just who’s more stubborn.”
“They just have a war of attrition,” he said, “and whichever one gets exhausted first capitulates to the other one. Again, you haven't arrived at truth, and this is very demoralizing.”
At Blue Origin, Bezos tells his team to “never get to a point where you are resolving something by who gets exhausted first. Escalate that. I'll help you make the decision.”
Launching controversy
But Bezos’s proximity to both Amazon and Blue Origin has led to controversy. A notable example is with Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which intends to challenge SpaceX’s well-established Starlink by also offering broadband internet access around the globe via satellites in low Earth orbit.
Last year, Amazon announced the launch partners for getting its planned 3,000-plus Kuiper satellites into orbit. While it contracted Bezos’s own Blue Origin—along with Europe’s Arianespace and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin—for up to 83 launches, it notably snubbed Musk’s SpaceX.
That prompted Amazon investors to sue the company’s leadership, alleging they “excluded the most obvious and affordable launch provider, SpaceX, from its procurement process because of Bezos’s personal rivalry with Musk.” The investors also said there was a “glaring conflict of interest,” with Amazon funneling money to Blue Origin when Bezos owned the latter and was executive chairman of the former. This week, Amazon sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, 10 days after announcing an agreement with SpaceX for three launches of its Kuiper satellites.
“The claims in the shareholder lawsuit had no impact on our procurement plans for Project Kuiper, including our recently disclosed launch agreement with SpaceX,” an Amazon spokesperson told Fortune. “The claims in that suit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process.”
SpaceX success
Either way, Amazon and Blue Origin have watched Musk’s space company race ahead in important areas.
In April 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a sole contact worth $2.9 billion for its lunar landing system. Blue Origin, which had competed for what it thought would be two contracts, sued the space agency over the decision, but it lost the case later that year.
Meanwhile Amazon’s Project Kuiper is trying to catch up with Starlink but has a long way to go.
Starlink, which offers broadband service globally, including in remote areas, already has more than 5,000 satellites in operation. Its satellites can beam data to one another using more than 8,000 lasers across the constellation, making for a faster, more reliable service.
In contrast to this flurry of progress, Amazon launched two prototype satellites only in October, announcing this week that they had successfully used lasers to beam data between them.
In the meantime Starlink is racing ahead, with more than 2 million active users. Costco recently began selling Starlink receivers, and this week SpaceX received U.S. approval to test direct-to-cell calls via Starlink in partnership with T-Mobile.
This year, SpaceX has notched more than 90 successful launches of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and it's become a juggernaut in the industry. It hit a near $180 billion valuation this week based on an ongoing secondary share sale, making it one of the world’s most valuable private companies.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Jeff Bezos says floating at zero gravity felt like a 'return to the womb'
AMAZING HE REMEMBERS FLOATING IN THE WOMB
Polly Thompson
Fri, December 15, 2023
Jeff Bezos has spoken to podcaster Lex Fridman about what going to space feels like.
He said that reaching zero gravity felt like a "return to the womb."
Bezos first journeyed to space on one of his Blue Origin rockets in July 2021.
The sensation of floating in space at zero gravity felt like returning to the womb for Jeff Bezos.
The billionaire Amazon founder traveled to space in July 2021 as part of Blue Origin's first passenger spaceflight.
Alongside his brother Mark and two other passengers, Bezos floated in a weightless capsule at zero gravity for about three minutes before gravity began pulling it back to Earth.
He shared his feelings about the experience in the latest episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast," which went live on Thursday.
"I'll tell you something very interesting: zero gravity feels very natural. I don't know if it's because it's like a return to the womb," he said.
"You just confirmed you're an alien," joked Fridman.
Bezos said that he wasn't at all nervous about the experience and that the whole crew was struck with the overview effect — the overwhelming feelings people experience when seeing Earth from space — while looking down at Earth.
"It was an incredible experience and we were laughing inside the capsule, and were not nervous," Bezos told Fridman.
"You see how fragile the Earth is. If you're not an environmentalist, it will make you one," he added.
During their two-hour interview, Bezos also discussed his vision for the future of humanity and told Fridman that he'd stepped down as Amazon CEO so that he could concentrate more on Blue Origin.
"Most of my time is spent on Blue Origin and I'm so deeply involved here now for the last couple of years," Bezos told Fridman.
The rocket company, which Bezos founded in 2000, has so far developed three space vehicles: the New Shepard, the New Glenn, and Blue Moon.
Blue Origin may try to launch the New Shepard again next week after more than 15 months of delays because of a mid-flight failure.
Fri, December 15, 2023
Jeff Bezos has spoken to podcaster Lex Fridman about what going to space feels like.
He said that reaching zero gravity felt like a "return to the womb."
Bezos first journeyed to space on one of his Blue Origin rockets in July 2021.
The sensation of floating in space at zero gravity felt like returning to the womb for Jeff Bezos.
The billionaire Amazon founder traveled to space in July 2021 as part of Blue Origin's first passenger spaceflight.
Alongside his brother Mark and two other passengers, Bezos floated in a weightless capsule at zero gravity for about three minutes before gravity began pulling it back to Earth.
He shared his feelings about the experience in the latest episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast," which went live on Thursday.
"I'll tell you something very interesting: zero gravity feels very natural. I don't know if it's because it's like a return to the womb," he said.
"You just confirmed you're an alien," joked Fridman.
Bezos said that he wasn't at all nervous about the experience and that the whole crew was struck with the overview effect — the overwhelming feelings people experience when seeing Earth from space — while looking down at Earth.
"It was an incredible experience and we were laughing inside the capsule, and were not nervous," Bezos told Fridman.
"You see how fragile the Earth is. If you're not an environmentalist, it will make you one," he added.
During their two-hour interview, Bezos also discussed his vision for the future of humanity and told Fridman that he'd stepped down as Amazon CEO so that he could concentrate more on Blue Origin.
"Most of my time is spent on Blue Origin and I'm so deeply involved here now for the last couple of years," Bezos told Fridman.
The rocket company, which Bezos founded in 2000, has so far developed three space vehicles: the New Shepard, the New Glenn, and Blue Moon.
Blue Origin may try to launch the New Shepard again next week after more than 15 months of delays because of a mid-flight failure.
