{"id":18511,"date":"2018-05-22T00:45:35","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T16:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/taking-a-page-from-amazon-playbook-jeff-bezos-says-its-day-one-for-space-industry\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T00:45:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T16:45:35","slug":"taking-a-page-from-amazon-playbook-jeff-bezos-says-its-day-one-for-space-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/taking-a-page-from-amazon-playbook-jeff-bezos-says-its-day-one-for-space-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a page from Amazon playbook, Jeff Bezos says it\u2019s \u2018Day One\u2019 for space industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jeff
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, speaks at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington, D.C. (Via Satellite Magazine via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDay One\u201d isn\u2019t just for Amazon anymore: Billionaire Jeff Bezos says that first-day feeling of being fired up about a business venture applies to Blue Origin and the commercial space industry as well.<\/p>\n

Bezos, the founder of Amazon as well as his privately held Blue Origin space venture, made the comment in a newly published interview with Via Satellite\u2019s Mark Holmes, which was conducted during the magazine\u2019s Satellite 2018 conference in March. Here\u2019s how Bezos summarized the message he wanted to get across:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI would be super optimistic about the future. The message would be that I think this is \u2018Day One\u2019 for the space industry. It is a big industry, it is already a significant industry and I think it is going to get much larger. I think we will find new uses for space that people haven\u2019t even figured out yet, in addition to communications. I don\u2019t know what they are, but I want to see that entrepreneurial explosion in space. I want to see dynamism. I want to see the same thing in space that I have witnessed on the internet over the last 20 years, where a thousand experiments are done and [there are] lots of start-up companies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDay One\u201d has been a mantra at Amazon since Bezos used the phrase in a letter to shareholders in 1997. The idea is that every day at a business should be marked by the same enthusiasm, restlessness and customer focus that\u2019s felt on the first day of a startup\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n

In last year\u2019s letter, Bezos went so far as to say there should never be a \u201cDay Two\u201d at Amazon. \u201cDay 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnd that<\/em> is why it is always<\/em> Day 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes sense that Bezos also applies his \u201cDay One\u201d philosophy to his space venture, headquartered in Kent, Wash. But in his public pronouncements, he usually emphasizes Blue Origin\u2019s slow but steady pace. \u201cSlow is smooth, and smooth is fast,\u201d he has said. Blue Origin\u2019s motto is \u201cGradatim Ferociter,\u201d which is Latin for \u201cStep by Step, Ferociously.\u201d Its mascot is a tortoise, for heaven\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

The Via Satellite interview includes hints that Bezos is giving a lot of thought about how to get from today\u2019s \u201cDay One\u201d to a day when millions of people are living and working in space \u2014 and that some of his thinking parallels the strategies followed by his billionaire rival, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

Like Musk, Bezos repeatedly emphasizes the view that rocket reusability is the key to bringing down the cost of access to space dramatically. Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard suborbital-class rocket has a fully reusable booster, and the New Glenn orbital-class rocket will have a first-stage booster that lands itself on an oceangoing ship (similar to SpaceX\u2019s autonomous drone landing ship).<\/p>\n