📱 Jeff Bezos: "Life After Being in Space Flight Can Never Be The Same"
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now the second richest man in the world after Elon Musk, with a net worth of $236 billion. He owns The Washington Post newspaper and the space technology company Blue Origin.
In July 2021, Bezos fulfilled his childhood dream of flying into space on his New Shepard rocket. In 2023, his company signed a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to build a spacecraft to take astronauts to the Moon and back.
His Bezos Earth Fund has spent $2 billion to fight the climate crisis. Bezos himself has been actively investing in various AI companies.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Bezos discussed his plans for space exploration, the prospects of AI, and the meaning of life.
Highlights:
🗣 When we take people up in space, the whole journey takes 11 minutes, and you're in space for four minutes. We go up above the Kármán line (100 km above sea level), and you see the curvature of the Earth and the thin limb of the Earth's atmosphere. It truly is a life-changing, transformative experience that's hard to describe. Life after this cannot be the same. Everybody who's ever been to space has felt this—it's called the Overview Effect. When Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 astronaut, saw the Earth from space, he said, "I realize that you don't go to heaven when you die, you go to heaven when you're born". That's how beautiful this planet is.
🗣 A number of people, including Elon Musk, say that we need an escape hatch from Earth and that we all need to move to Mars because Earth cannot be saved. I believe there is no plan B. We have to save the Earth.
🗣 We need to make the cost of access to space low enough. Our New Glenn orbital vehicle is ready for launch and awaiting regulatory approval. I have high hopes for it, although my ideas may seem fantastical to you right now. For example, moving all polluting industries off Earth to space. That way, we can save our planet's ecosystem and free up much energy.
🗣 The Moon is a good stepping stone to the rest of the solar system. The Moon has a much lower gravity level than the Earth. Raising a kilogram of mass from the Earth takes 28 times as much energy as raising that same kilogram from the Moon. It also has a lot of very important minerals and water in the form of ice at the poles. The ice can be converted into oxygen and hydrogen and used as rocket fuel. A couple of generations in the future, and we'll be able to get raw materials from the Moon.
🗣 Some say that when artificial intelligence is smarter and better than us at various things, it may take the meaning out of your life. I don't agree with that. For example, I consider myself a very good writer, but I know people who are much better writers than I am or are better at math. But that doesn't take away the meaning of life. For me, the meaning comes from the relationships we build with people.
📱 Watch the full interview here
More on the topic:
🔄 Elon Musk vs Jeff Bezos: Who Will Be the First on the Moon?
🔄 Project Rainier—the Most Powerful Supercomputer from Amazon
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