{"id":18733,"date":"2017-11-15T20:52:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T12:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-spaceflight-jeff-bezos-links-blue-origin-to-saving-earth\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T20:52:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T12:52:15","slug":"life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-spaceflight-jeff-bezos-links-blue-origin-to-saving-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-spaceflight-jeff-bezos-links-blue-origin-to-saving-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Life, liberty and the pursuit of spaceflight? Jeff Bezos links Blue Origin to saving Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_219792\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-219792\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-219792\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151229-champagne-630x444.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Origin rocket landing\" width=\"630\" height=\"444\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151229-champagne-630x444.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151229-champagne-768x541.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151229-champagne-1240x873.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151229-champagne.jpg 1385w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-219792\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (in hat and sunglasses) pops open a bottle of champagne after Blue Origin\u2019s first New Shepard rocket landing in November 2015. (Blue Origin Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 vision for his Blue Origin rocket venture is to have millions of people living and working in space&nbsp;\u2014 but why?<\/p>\n<p>During this month\u2019s Summit Series invitation-only event in Los Angeles, Bezos explained that it\u2019s not just because he\u2019s a Star Trek fan&nbsp;\u2014 although he is that indeed. He sees going beyond Earth as a critical step toward preserving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on our home planet.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not even considering fellow billionaire Elon Musk\u2019s view that Mars and other planets would serve as a Plan B for humanity in the event of an Earth-killing catastrophe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hate the \u2018Plan B\u2019 argument,\u201d Bezos said during a fireside chat that featured his brother Mark as emcee.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Bezos extrapolates from current trends in population growth and energy use, just as British physicist Stephen Hawking did this month. If the lines on the chart creep up by just a few percent per year, eventually \u201cyou\u2019d have to cover the entire Earth\u2019s surface in solar cells,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo, we have two choices: We either go out into space, or we switch over to a civilization of stasis. Personally, I do not like the idea of stasis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Jeff Bezos lays out a plan for settling the moon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YDcYdR0Sav8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bezos went even further, saying that over the long run, freezing civilization in place might not be an option unless the world\u2019s governments become much more authoritarian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn real stasis, somebody is going to have to tell you how many kids you can have, how much energy you can use,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019ll be all kinds of things that just aren\u2019t consistent with liberty and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If humanity can harness space resources, not even the sky needs to be the limit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe could have a trillion humans in the solar system, and it still wouldn\u2019t be crowded,\u201d Bezos said. \u201cThen, if you have a trillion humans, you\u2019d have a thousand Einsteins, a thousand Mozarts, a thousand da Vincis&nbsp;\u2014 and how cool would that be?<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>More from Summit<\/strong>: From biscuits to \u2018Buff Bezos\u2019: Amazon CEO talks about shedding his poor eating habits<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cBut we have to go to space,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to go to space to save Earth. That\u2019s why this work is so important. And we don\u2019t have forever to do it. We\u2019ve now gotten so big as a civilization on Earth that we kinda have to hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHurry\u201d is a relative term: Bezos founded Blue Origin nearly 20 years ago, but the company is just now preparing to send humans on suborbital trips into space. If all goes as Bezos hopes, Blue Origin\u2019s first spacefliers will go up on the New Shepard rocket ship in West Texas sometime next year.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin is also getting ready to open a factory in Florida to build its orbital-class New Glenn rockets. Within a few years, Blue Origin could be delivering payloads to the moon, but Bezos acknowledges that it could take hundreds of years to have millions of people living and working in space.<\/p>\n<p>So where will Bezos end up? Elon Musk has said he\u2019d like to retire on Mars, but Bezos says \u201cno thanks\u201d to that idea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have sent robotic probes to every planet in this solar system. Believe me, this is the best one,\u201d Bezos said. \u201cWe know that. It\u2019s not even close. My friends who say they want to move to Mars or something \u2026 I say, \u2018Why don\u2019t you live in Antarctica for a year first, because it\u2019s a garden paradise compared to Mars.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Check out the full Summit Series chat between the two Bezoses in the video below:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and brother Mark give a rare interview about growing up and secrets to success\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hq89wYzOjfs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (in hat and sunglasses) pops open a bottle of champagne after Blue Origin\u2019s first New Shepard rocket landing in November 2015. (Blue Origin Photo) Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 vision for his Blue Origin rocket venture is to have millions of people living and working in space&nbsp;\u2014 but why? During this month\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,1046],"class_list":["post-18733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-jeff-bezos"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}