Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Details Plans to Coloinze Space

The Amazon chief has amassed an insurmountable amount of wealth in the past decade due to the critical success of Amazon, and now, he is setting his sights on a more extensive project involving the colonization of space. While Elon Musk is looking towards the red planet of Mars, Bezos is keeping his plans more local, with the goal of colonizing the moon. Earlier this weekend, Bezos dropped some hints as to how these plans have a solid chance of really getting started within the coming decades through his space company called Blue Origin.

In a statement at the Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, Bezos said he believes that humans will ultimately use the vast expanse in space as a giant solar powered manufacturing area that will drive new industry.

As reported by Geekwire, Bezos said, “We will have to leave this planet. “We’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better. We’ll come and go, and the people who want to stay, will stay […] Earth will be zoned for residential and light industrial use, while heavy industry will be moved off the planet and powered by 24/7 solar power.” He continued, “The Earth is not a very good place to do heavy industry. It’s convenient for us right now. But in the not-too-distant future—I’m talking decades, maybe 100 years—it’ll start to be easier to do a lot of the things that we currently do on Earth in space, because we’ll have so much energy.”

Bezos believes that the lunar surface is perfect for this plan to colonize, with polar deposits of water ice that could be mined for oxygen and rocket fuel. He added that with Blue Origin’s potential for a NASA public-partner partnership, it could result in the construction of a new lunar lander that could help transport over five tons of cargo in preparation for the arrival of humans.

While all of Bezos’s competitors clearly have an advantage in tested rockets, Blue Origin is testing suborbital rockets, with goals of developing a similar model to the successful Falcon Heavy, designed by SpaceX. Bezos is currently liquidating $1 billion of his Amazon stock each year to fund the company, and plans to continue in order to achieve his goal of a human lunar colony.