Why Jeff Bezos spends billions on space technologies



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According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Amazon's boss, Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world with a current net worth of $ 125 billion. And he invests a large part of his Amazon fortune in the development of space technologies through his aerospace company Blue Origin.

Why? "Because I think it's important," Bezos told Norah O Donnell of "CBS Evening News" in an interview broadcast Tuesday. "I think it's important for this planet, I think for the dynamism of future generations, it's an issue that is close to my heart." And that's something I've been thinking about since always."

Bezos – who says "you do not choose your pbadions, your pbadions choose you" – became fascinated by space when he was a child, observing astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, he says. to O & # 39; Donnell.

In addition, the development of space technologies is essential for human beings to have a long future, says Bezos.

"We humans must go into space if we want to continue to have a flourishing civilization," said Bezos. "We have become a large population, a species, and our planet is relatively small, we see it in areas such as climate change, pollution and heavy industry, we are destroying this planet. we have sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system – that's the good, so we need to preserve this planet. "

To do this, it will be necessary to be able to live and work in the space, explains Bezos.

"We send objects in space, but they are all made on Earth, and it will ultimately be much cheaper and simpler to create really complicated things like microprocessors and everything else in space. and then return these extremely complex manufactured objects to earth, so that we do not have the big factories and the polluting industries that make these things now on Earth, "Bezos said. "And the Earth can be zoned residential."

It will be "several generations" and "hundreds of years" before it is a reality, Bezos told CBS, but with Blue Origin, he is working on developing the technology that will make this possible.

People will be able to live in space (in autonomous space structures) if they wish, says Bezos.

"People will want to live on Earth and want to live out of the Earth, there will also be beautiful places to live on Earth, and people will make that choice," said Bezos.

Astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, wrote a letter to Bezos in 2016 saying that the work done by Bezos would make space travel as common as travel. by plane.

"He wrote me the most beautiful letter a few days before his death and I wrote it in my office, which is very meaningful to me," Bezos said. Glenn said in this letter that he sees a future when we ship in spaceships like airliners, and that "when that happens, it will be largely because of your epic exploits".

"I think it's quite believable," Bezos said. "If you went back a hundred years and told people today that you would be able to buy a ticket and fly around the world by airliner, they would have thought you were crazy. But that's the kind of change that can happen in just 100 years or less. "

The first step of this journey is space tourism, explains Bezos. Blue Origin is already testing its vehicle, the New Shepherd, to take humans to space on short trips.

"All those who go to space say that they come back a little bit changed and realize how beautiful and small and fragile this planet is," Bezos said. "Something we can not see when we are here, but from up there it becomes obvious."

See also:

3 secrets of billionaire Jeff Bezos to success

The suburbs of Seattle where Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates live are running out of money

The single mother of Jeff Bezos brought him to the evening school with her when he was a baby

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, spoke at the 1969 lunar symposium at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, in the Dorchester district of Boston, June 19, 2019.

Boston Globe | Boston Globe | Getty Images

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