The world's richest person
Jeff Bezos already liquidates $1 billion (£0.7 billion) of his fortune in space
travel every year. That figure is only set to increase as he now says he thinks
the best use of his astonishing $131 billion (£96 billion) wealth is getting
man into the space.
He says our solar system
could support a trillion humans meaning we would have 'a thousand Einsteins and
a thousand Mozarts' giving humanity incredible powers.
Bezos has previously called
his Blue Origin space company his 'most important project' and says he one day
aims to have human settlements beyond Earth. Bezos made the comments during an
interview with CEO of Axel Springer Mathias Döpfner and Business Insider's US
editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell in Berlin.
'The only way that I can see
to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into
space travel,' Bezos said, writes Business Insider. 'I am going to use my
financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that', he said. The Amazon CEO
says he has been interested in space since he was five years old and believes
humanity needs to explore it in order to cultivate a more advanced
civilisation.
'I am very lucky that I feel
like I have a mission-driven purpose with Blue Origin that is, I think,
incredibly important for civilization long term', he said. He claimed that
humanity risks reaching a state of stasis and getting to new frontiers would
mean our species stays productive and dynamic.
'The solar system can easily
support a trillion humans', he said. 'And
if we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand
Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power
unlimited for all practical purposes', he said.
After the interview the
Amazon CEO shared an image from late-night TV host Conan O'Brien on his
Instagram. O'Brien had made a joke about how Bezos planned to spend his fortune
during the Tuesday night episode of 'Conan'.
'Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says
he is planning to spend the majority of his fortune getting himself into
space', O'Brien said. 'He said, "I've seen what you people buy, and I
don't want to be near you"', O'Brien joked.
Jeff Bezos' space tourism
project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar programme in development
by Space X, the rocket firm founded and run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin
Galactic, backed by Richard Branson. Bezos
is pursuing Blue Origin with vigour as he tries to launch his 'New Glenn'
rocket into low-Earth orbit by 2020.
As part of this mission he
successfully launched his eighth rocket test flight from West Texas on
Sunday. The system consists of a
pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable 'New Shepard' booster rocket.
While the New Shepherd
capsule is designed to carry up to six 'space tourists,' it was unmanned for
this flight. The event marked the seventh successful booster flight in a row
for Blue Origin.
Blue Origin will presumably
start test flights to move toward that goal later this year, but no target
dates have been made publicly known at this time.
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