{"id":19408,"date":"2016-04-13T18:47:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T10:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/interview-jeff-bezos-lays-out-blue-origins-space-vision-from-tourism-to-off-planet-heavy-industry\/"},"modified":"2016-04-13T18:47:19","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T10:47:19","slug":"interview-jeff-bezos-lays-out-blue-origins-space-vision-from-tourism-to-off-planet-heavy-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/interview-jeff-bezos-lays-out-blue-origins-space-vision-from-tourism-to-off-planet-heavy-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Jeff Bezos lays out Blue Origin\u2019s space vision, from tourism to off-planet heavy industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom
Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with GeekWire aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle at the 32nd Space Symposium. (Tom Kimmell Photography, Courtesy of the Space Foundation.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2013 Amazon\u2019s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn\u2019t focused on creating America\u2019s biggest online retailer when he was a boy. But he often says that he\u2019s been obsessed with outer space since the age of 5, when he watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.<\/p>\n

That means he\u2019s had a lot of time to think about how spaceflight should be done, and what kind of future is in store beyond our home planet. It\u2019s what led him to create a space venture called Blue Origin a decade and a half ago. Now Blue Origin is taking off in a big way, literally: Over the past six months, Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard suborbital rocket ship has gone through three successful launch-and-landing tests. People could start taking test flights on New Shepard as early as next year, with paying passengers due to climb aboard in 2018.<\/p>\n

At this week\u2019s 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Bezos and I were on stage for a \u201cfireside chat\u201d during which the Amazon CEO discussed his vision for space travel. The \u201cfireside\u201d was purely figurative, but the chat nevertheless sparked some deep thoughts about Blue Origin\u2019s business model, the state of the space industry and humanity\u2019s future on the final frontier. Here\u2019s an edited transcript:<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> You\u2019ve learned a lot about how this space thing is done over the past, has it been 16 years?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> Actually, it depends on how you count. I\u2019ve been obsessed over rockets, rocket engines and spaceflights since I was 5 years old. So in some ways, it\u2019s 47 years. In others, it\u2019s about 15. I started Blue Origin about 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> And you\u2019ve got this other little company called Amazon.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> Yes, that\u2019s my day job.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> How would you compare the way that things were when you started Amazon, as opposed to the way things are in the space industry right now?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> It\u2019s very interesting, because I want to see the kind of explosive growth that we\u2019ve seen on the Internet with all of the entrepreneurship and dynamism. It\u2019s been a kind of a golden age that you\u2019ve seen over the last 20 years. Amazon opened its doors in 1995, so that\u2019s 21 years ago. When we opened our doors, we had 10 employees. I was driving the packages to the post office myself in my 1987 Chevy Blazer and dreaming one day that we might have a forklift.<\/p>\n

Today we deliver 5 billion-plus units a year, we have $100 billion in sales, hundreds of thousands of employees, and we\u2019re not alone. If you look at the Internet, that\u2019s a big industry now, made up of a bunch of very healthy, entrepreneurial, thriving companies of all shapes and sizes, pursuing different missions. It\u2019s very dynamic and very exciting. That happened very fast \u2026 just two decades to see that kind of dynamism unfold.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Jeff Bezos. (GeekWire File Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can tell you why it happened. If you think about e-commerce, all of the heavy lifting was already done. We had all these big pieces of infrastructure in place. For Amazon to be an e-commerce company in 1995, we didn\u2019t have to roll out a national transportation network to deliver parcel packages. The Postal Service was already there. UPS was already there. That would have been billions of dollars in assets and taken many decades to deploy, but it was already there. It wasn\u2019t there for e-commerce, it was there for other reasons.<\/p>\n

Same thing, the Internet, we had a phone network. You remember these little modems that we could attach, these acoustic modems, and we could do Internet in early days standing on top of another huge piece of infrastructure which was the local and long distance telephone network. It wasn\u2019t designed for the Internet. It wasn\u2019t designed for e-commerce. It was designed for voice calls, but it was there. Same thing with remote payments: You had credit cards and so on. So there were a bunch of pieces already existing.<\/p>\n

If you want to see a dynamic golden age with entrepreneurial energy where thousands of entrepreneurs could be doing amazing things in space, we can\u2019t do that. We haven\u2019t seen that in 50 years, and the reason we haven\u2019t seen it is because the big heavy lifting pieces are not yet in place. There may be multiple things that would have to happen before you can see that kind of gigantic leap, but I don\u2019t think so. I really think it\u2019s just one big piece, and it\u2019s that we need much lower-cost access to space.<\/p>\n

Right now, only the most important applications can make their way to space because of the costs to get there, and so we are at a certain equilibrium. That equilibrium isn\u2019t taking us far enough, fast enough. If you look at the number of launches, I think in a very good year, these days maybe we have 50 launches. I\u2019m talking about planetwide through all of humanity, 50 launches. That\u2019s actually down. If you go back in time 30 years, our launch rates were a little higher.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Jeff Bezos celebrates the vertical takeoff and landing of Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is Blue Origin\u2019s mission. Our mission is to try and put in place some of that heavy lifting infrastructure: Make access to space at much lower cost so that thousands of entrepreneurs can do amazing and interesting things, and take us into the next era. I\u2019m very excited about it. We only need two things to be able to do it: reusability and practice. Reusability is essential because you can never lower the costs to a sufficient degree if you throw the hardware away. That hardware is just too beautiful. First of all, it\u2019s just painful. You get this great feeling when looking at a piece of aerospace-grade hardware. It\u2019s so beautiful and so precise. To use it once and throw it away is a kind of crime.<\/p>\n

And then practice: We humans don\u2019t get great at things we do a dozen times a year. The most used launch vehicles fly a dozen times a year. That\u2019s just not enough to get great at it. You never want to get a surgeon [who does the operation just a dozen times a year]. If you need to have a surgery, find somebody who does the operation 20 to 25 times a week. That\u2019s the right level of practice. That\u2019s why I\u2019m so excited about the tourism mission, because it exercises all the kinds of systems. In fact, in the case of our BE-3 engine, it even exercises the actual engine we\u2019ll use on day on upper stages and during in-space missions. We\u2019ll put a bigger nozzle on it for in-space missions, but it will be the same valve, the same power pack, the same thrust chamber. It\u2019s going to be the same engine. It will be the most tested, most practiced hydrogen engine anywhere in the world, because it\u2019s going to be doing this very inexpensive tourism mission.<\/p>\n

\"Elon
Elon Musk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> Jeff, you\u2019re not the only one who is looking at that aspect of re-usability and practice. There\u2019s Elon Musk, for example. You had your reusable rocket landing. The latest one was just this month. And just in the last few days, Elon had a rocket land on an at-sea platform. Richard Branson is involved, too, [with Virgin Galactic]. There\u2019s been a lot of talk about who has the best approach. How is that space ecosystem coming together? Is this a dog-eat-dog world, or is this a rising tide that lifts all boats?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> That\u2019s what I think. Oftentimes, it\u2019s very natural to think of business competition like a sporting event. In a sporting event, there actually is a winner and a loser. Somebody leaves the arena a winner, and somebody leaves the arena a loser. In business, it\u2019s usually a little different from that. Great industries are usually built by not just one, or two or three companies, but usually by dozens of companies. There can be many winners, even hundreds and thousands of companies in a truly great industry. I think that\u2019s what we are headed toward here. From my point of view, the more, the merrier. I want Virgin Galactic to succeed, I want SpaceX to succeed, I want United Launch Alliance to succeed, I want Arianespace to succeed, and of course I want Blue Origin to succeed. And I think they all can.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> Do you have any particular sectors that you are looking at? For example when you started Amazon, you started with books. That was a kind of a killer app for Amazon. Is there a similar killer app for Blue Origin?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> You could say that space tourism might be the books equivalent for Blue Origin. We are working on an orbital vehicle now. We launch from Pad 36 [at Cape Canaveral, Fla.]. It uses the BE-4 engine, which is also going to fly on United Launch Alliance\u2019s new Vulcan vehicle. \u2026<\/p>\n

What we use over and over again at Blue is a particular strategy where we choose a medium-performing version of a high-performing architecture, so the BE-4 engine uses the same oxygen-rich stage combustion cycle. It\u2019s a very high-performing rocket engine cycle \u2013 the same one that the [Russian-made] RD-180 uses, but the difference is that we operate at lower chamber pressures than the RD-180 and still can get very high performance. It adds a lot of margin when you look at things like wall compatibility and heat transfer rates and so on, to go down from that. When you get into a development effort like the space shuttle main engine or the RD-180, that\u2019s when you are doing a high-performing version of a high-performing architecture. You are getting the last few seconds of specific impulse, and you really pay a very big price for doing the high-performing version.<\/p>\n

If you choose a medium-performing architecture or a low-performing architecture, you get cornered into a place where you have to go for the high-performing version of the medium-performing architecture, so that\u2019s why I go for high-performing architectures but don\u2019t go for the last bit of performance in that architecture.<\/p>\n

\"Tom
Tom Kimmell Photography Courtesy of the Space Foundation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> There have been some questions about how you scale from suborbital to orbital operations. For example, Elon Musk started going right to orbital. But do you see suborbital as a valid testing ground? Are there lessons you are learning?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> For sure. \u2026 Look, there are a bunch of reusability architectures. I hope they all get tried, because I want something to work, and work really well. The propulsive landing, the vertical landing architecture is what I like because it is the easiest one to scale. Other architectures, you can have wings and you can fly back to the launch site. You can have parachutes. Kistler Aerospace was a big proponent of reusing the first stage using a parachute landing and airbags. Totally workable, it can be done. But what\u2019s great about vertical landing is, it\u2019s so scalable. You\u2019re solving the \u201cinverted pendulum\u201d problem. The bigger the inverted pendulum gets, the higher its moment of inertia, and the easier it is to keep balance, and the easier it is to land and to reject disturbances, wind shear and  so on.<\/p>\n

Our New Shepard vehicle has the smallest vertical landing booster we\u2019ll ever build. Our orbital vehicle is much, much larger. In terms of the landing segment, which is the most challenging segment on this kind of mission, that part of the segment just gets easier with scale. In fact, in general, rockets want to be big. There are a lot of things that scale really well on rockets, and then there\u2019s one thing that doesn\u2019t scale well with rockets, and that\u2019s manufacturing facilities. As you get big, you pay the price with everything on the ground. Manufacturing, transportation facilities, test facilities, all those things get harder. But rotating the scenery, for example, turbo pumps, they love to be big. A big turbo pump even with generous clearances can be very efficient. Same thing with rocket engine thrust chambers. They scale really well, and it turns out vertical landing likes the same thing. The bigger, the better, as far as vertical landing is concerned.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> We\u2019re getting some questions that are being texted to us, and here\u2019s the first one. Are there plans for Blue Origin to start providing other types of infrastructure besides launch? For example, satellites.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> No. We don\u2019t have any plans to start making satellites. Our orbital vehicle will be available to launch satellites, and I think that\u2019s an important market. We\u2019ll be one of the many participants working to drive down the cost of launching satellites.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> You\u2019re very focused on launch, and it sounds like you\u2019re leaving the satellite market to others. Are there other markets that you are going to be leaving to others? For example, there\u2019s a lot of talk about national security launches.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Billionaire Jeff Bezos strikes a pose beside the copper nozzle for a BE-4 rocket engine at Blue Origin\u2019s production facility in Kent, Wash. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> Our contribution to national security is going to be making a great BE-4 engine, and then United Launch Alliance is going to use that engine in their vehicle for national security payloads. I\u2019m very excited about that. I have to tell you, in my Amazon job the CIA is a big user of Amazon Web Services. It has been very gratifying to be part of that national security mission. Not that I really need any additional passion or motivation for space, but I have to tell you that all of us at Blue Origin find the fact that we are going to get to help with the national security missions incredibly motivating.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> A couple of questions: Is Amazon just a bank to finance Blue Origin? And were there any organizations that were influential or helped you out in college to foster your love of space?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> Yes, in fact, my high-school girlfriend has been interviewed in the media, and has said that she is sure Amazon exists solely to create money for Blue Origin. I can neither confirm nor deny that. \u2026<\/p>\n

My love of space was already well-entrenched long before college. My love of space comes from being imprinted at age 5 watching Neil Armstrong step on the surface of the moon. I remember how excited everybody was, and I got very excited about that. We should choose to go to space for many reasons, and I think it\u2019s really important for a whole bunch of reasons including national security. But one of the things is, I think it\u2019s very inspiring for a certain kind of young kid to watch these missions, and it leads them into science, and engineering, and math. I think that\u2019s really good for the United States. I think it\u2019s really good for the world.<\/p>\n

Alan Boyle:<\/strong> Another question. What is your envisioned model for training space tourists?<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos:<\/strong> For the suborbital mission, training is going to be relatively simple. One of the things you have to be able to do is emergency egress. We\u2019ll train people for that. One of the things that you have to be able to do is get out of your seat and get back into your seat. We want people to be able to get out, float around, do somersaults, enjoy microgravity, look out those beautiful windows, get up close. So we need to be able to train people to get out of their seats and then be able to get back into them and buckle themselves in securely. It\u2019s an 11- or 12-minute mission. It doesn\u2019t take a tremendous amount of training. It takes a little bit of training. It won\u2019t be a difficult thing to train for.<\/p>\n