{"id":18008,"date":"2019-06-19T21:15:24","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/jeff-bezos-explains-how-going-to-the-moon-is-harder-now-than-it-was-for-jfk-in-1962\/"},"modified":"2019-06-19T21:15:24","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:15:24","slug":"jeff-bezos-explains-how-going-to-the-moon-is-harder-now-than-it-was-for-jfk-in-1962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/jeff-bezos-explains-how-going-to-the-moon-is-harder-now-than-it-was-for-jfk-in-1962\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos explains how going to the moon is harder now than it was for JFK in 1962"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Caroline
Jeff Bezos checks out a framed facsimile of a note bearing the signatures of three Mercury astronauts, given as a gift by Caroline Kennedy. (JFK Library Foundation Photo \/ Tom Fitzsimmons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in 1962, President John F. Kennedy said he chose to have Americans go to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Today, billionaire Jeff Bezos said it\u2019s still hard \u2014 and in some ways, it\u2019s even harder than it was in the \u201960s.<\/p>\n

Bezos, the world\u2019s richest person by virtue of his status as the founder of Amazon and the Blue Origin space venture, laid out his argument during a discussion with the late president\u2019s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Today\u2019s \u201cJFK Library Space Summit\u201d was a daylong affair that drew luminaries ranging from Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg.<\/p>\n

JFK\u2019s famous Rice University speech came up when Bezos reflected on how difficult it is to get off Earth and travel to other worlds. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like God set this problem up as achievable, but just barely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The technical difficulties were huge when JFK pledged to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back safely by the end of the 1960s: Some of the technologies required to do so didn\u2019t even exist at the time. Nevertheless, the job was done on the promised timetable.<\/p>\n

Today, many of those technical difficulties have been sorted out. But challenges remain. Some of those challenges have to do with the time frame required for exploration and settlement beyond Earth orbit. For instance, Bezos founded Blue Origin nearly 20 years ago, but has yet to put a person in space or a payload in orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working on deep infrastructure,\u201d Bezos said, \u201cand so deep infrastructure takes a long time to build, and the pipeline is really long.\u201d In contrast to, say, making a movie or founding a startup, \u201cthe kinds of things we\u2019re working on have 15-, 20-year kinds of time frames, and that\u2019s very, very challenging,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is hard. And it\u2019s supposed to be hard,\u201d he said. Then he turned toward Kennedy with a smile and said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, I heard somewhere that we do these things because they\u2019re hard.\u201d<\/p>\n