An interesting interview. It’s mostly about Amazon’s business model and plans, but Blue Origin does come up:
Levy: You have a separate company called Blue Origin that hopes to send customers into outer space. Why is that important to you?
Bezos: It is a serious effort. When I was 5 years old, I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. It made me passionate about science, physics, math, exploration.
Levy: Will you walk on the moon someday?
Bezos: Me? Are you saying would I if I could?
Levy: I bet you’d like to, but do you think you will?
Bezos: Boy. I’ve been asked to make tough predictions before. That one’s very tough. But that’s not what this is about. If I wanted to buy tourist trips to fly to the International Space Station and Soyuz and those things, there’s nothing wrong with that. But that’s $35 million. I want to lower the cost of access to space.
Levy: How do you do that?
Bezos: I like to say, “Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.” For Amazon, that’s selection, speed of delivery, lower prices. Well, for Blue Origin it’s cost and safety. If you really want to make it so that anybody can go into space, you have to increase the safety and decrease the cost. That’s Blue Origin’s mission. I’m super passionate about it.
Levy: Do you feel that it’s a bit disconnected to start a space-exploration company in this economically grim time?
Bezos: No. We employ a lot of aerospace engineers. They have families, their kids go to college. We buy a lot of materials. Somebody made those materials, right?
I don’t even understand that last question, but note the use of the e-word. I wish we could get people to think about space in terms other than science and exploration.
[Late morning update]
This is sort of related. Lileks isn’t impressed with the Kindle Fire.
I think “connected” means plugged into reality, not some ivory tower fantasy.
> but note the use of the e-word. I wish we could get people to think about space in terms other than science and exploration.
I so totally agree. Space development is the next step that’s needed. But at this early point of Blue Origin, I think that it’s appropriate to call it exploration. Suborbital tourist flights could be considered to be exploration of space. Although orbital launches is more the commercial development of LEO and so not exploration, it doesn’t use in-space resources (apart from a bit of solar power). Rather, what we need next is for someone to begin lunar development. Then we will begin permanently opening up space.
I tend to agree with Lileks, but comparing a Kindle Fire to an iPad is like comparing a Kia to a BMW. If I spend 3 times more, then I expect at least 3 times better.
Back to the space discussion…
Do you feel that it’s a bit disconnected to start a space-exploration company in this economically grim time?
Holy cow, some idiot actually asked this question? I hope Bezos sends him a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Do you feel that it’s a bit disconnected to start a space-exploration company in this economically grim time?
I had to laugh at that question. Really, the global economy is on the brink of full-on collapse; and the Middle East is a tinderbox soaked in gasoline, just waiting for a match. What better time to be thinking about getting the hell out of Dodge?
I’d rather a Kindle Touch 3G over a Kindle Fire. Not only is it cheaper, it actually has 3G and a lot longer battery life. The only draw of the Fire is the color screen.
It has another draw: Android. It can be rooted and made to work just the way you want.
Wired would rather see Bezos cure poor people or give free web hosting and tablets to OWS. What if Bezos was making electric cars and not spaceships? What a waste. But what can you expect from a man that put millions of mom and pop stores out of business.
The thing is, a lot of people use “exploration” in its old-fashioned sense — going to discovery strange new places, with the view of one day settling them and exploiting their resources. For a while, an attitude that I think reached its zenith in the 1970s, there came about a different idea of “exploration” — which was to gather knowledge only, which we would somehow use to enhance our life on Earth and also to make ourselves feel puffed up and important about how much more we “know” now, but we would otherwise leave what we “explored” pristine and untouched. This led to the idea that human beings should not even bother going into space — it was too dangerous, it was too expensive, but most of all, we shouldn’t get our icky dirty fingers all over nice clean space. Instead, we should send out “probes,” nice neat little mechanisms. (That of course wouldn’t immediately become space litter or Mars litter or whatever.) There are reasons this idea became so popular, at least among the academic elite; the chief reason is the “Western Civ is bad, especially all that exploration and exploitation of the New World” idea. They’ve just transposed their dislike of Western Civilization onto the entire universe.
But I can bet you that when the average person thinks about exploring space, he thinks of men going out there in space ships and finding new places to live and things to get. The explore-find-use impulse is basic to humanity, else we would all still live in Africa.
But I can bet you that when the average person thinks about exploring space, he thinks of men going out there in space ships and finding new places to live and things to get
Not anymore they don’t. This may have been the case 30 years ago when everyone still remembered Collier’s “Man conquers space”, but now when average person even happens to think about “exploring space” he probably just remembers a bunch of bozos in space suits doing some arcane and very expensive stuffs, with no relevance to themselves or their future.
Last 30 years of government-run spaceflight and its popular image have made very sure of that.
O’Neillian visions are really no longer part of popular imagination.
I guess that’s why science fiction movies and books and tv shows are so popular. Because no one cares any more about “bunch of bozos in space suits doing some arcane and very expensive stuffs, with no relevance to themselves or their future.”
And if you could pull your head out of the NASA for a minute, I was talking about what the term “space exploration” meant to people, not what the government space programs of the 1960s meant to people.
The problem is that NASA has tried and largely succeeded in making themselves synonymous with “space” for the average Joe.
For masses, space=NASA.
( for proof, look at the confused mass media reporting whenever something SpaceX or Google Lunar X-Prize related breaks the news barrier )
At least until some spectacular success of private spaceflight ( you know, apart from operating comsats ) makes a huge splash in mass media, or there are hundreds of private spaceflight participants around speaking about their experiences, this will unfortunately remain so.
The problem with exploration is as you describe, Andrea. The average person thinks it means something Dr. Livingston would do. You may not permenantly settle, but you’ll be there for a long time laying the groundwork to help others settle.
NASA and the US government want you to believe they are laying the groundwork. They make nice powerpoint drawings, paintings, and animated movies showing their plans. But when you look at what they are actually developing; it won’t get people any where to spend any time there. Still, they hope the average person buys into what they are doing if they soft sell by using the word, “exploration”.
Yes, NASA has become nothing more than another permanent government institution that exists to make “jobs” and hoover up as much tax money as they can. They’re the ones who are the cynical people. I knew someone who went to work for NASA about ten years ago. It was his dream job. He quit, disillusioned, when he realized he was just working at a bureaucracy. NASA is just a fancier Post Office. I suggest we forget about NASA altogether when we talk about going into space.
Well, I don’t think you are completely wrong, but I do think you are somewhat wrong. Here’s a few reasons why:
Dawn is currently making the first-ever visit to Vesta, and much more excitingly, it will make the first-ever visit to Ceres in 2015. Ceres may have a Europa-style ocean, among other interesting aspects. Anyone who wants to see humans settle the solar system should look forward to the Ceres mission.
New Horizons will make the first-ever visit to Pluto, also in 2015. Pluto and even its largest moon Charon may also have internal oceans. It is also just a very weird place, where, for example, the atmosphere freezes out and falls like snow in the (very long) winter. Anyone who thinks humans will someday settle the Kuiper belt, and anyone who wants to see very odd places should look forward to New Horizons’ arrival in Pluto’s neighborhood.
MSL is scheduled to launch tomorrow. The pace of Martian exploration is frustratingly cautious (no “life detectors” on board) but at the same time, pretty damn impressive (“skycrane lowers a car-sized rover onto ancient river delta”).
The Kepler Mission is totally awesome. Enough said?
I could go on, listing other current NASA missions, and why they should be important or interesting to folks who read this blog (Messenger studying ice on Mercury, Cassini flying through the fountains of Enceladus and unveiling the seas of Titan, Stereo’s first scouting of EM-L4 and L5 ), and that’s just planetary science – there are other areas NASA is exploring, like the quite possibly mineable anti-matter in orbit around Earth, but I hope I’ve made my point — yes, it is a horrible bureaucracy, but NASA is also exploring our corner of the universe.
Interesting, Bob said he disagreed, said he would provide reasons, and gave absolutely no example that contradicts Andrea.
Leland, making the first visit to Ceres, Pluto, etc contradicts these four ideas:
1)” NASA has become nothing more than another permanent government institution that exists to make “jobs” and hoover up as much tax money as they can.”
2) “They’re the ones who are the cynical people.”
3) “NASA is just a fancier Post Office.”
4) “I suggest we forget about NASA altogether when we talk about going into space.”
A fancier cynical post office existing to only create jobs which has no relevance to people talking about going into space wouldn’t be making the first of humanity’s visits to Ceres. If you want to turn the solar system in an economic zone (or even just talk about it), it starts with surveying the places in question.
Oh, I’m sorry Bob. I thought you had read the original post and Andrea’s first comments. By all means, continue to miss the discussion the rest of us are having. Yes, yes, exploring Pluto, brilliant. I’m sure the pictures will be fascinating. Good thing Obama decided to cut manned spaceflight to fund more climate research at NASA. I’m sure Hansen will fix his models once he gets that data on Pluto. He did so well with Venus, right? Indeed, NASA’s not taking his tax dollars!
Apparently unlike you, I think people will eventually settle both Ceres and Kuiper Belt.
Apparently unlike you, I think NASA will help people
willeventually settle both Ceres and Kuiper Belt.FIFY
NASA’s current plan to return to the moon is 2030. The first manned flight on a new NASA launch platform isn’t until 2018. Back in 2000, NASA was planning manned Mars missions tentatively set for 2012. We got MLS instead. In NASA speak, the schedule has slipped to the right some.
I think most NASA facilities will be national parks by 2030. Most of the missions you trumpted are worked by a much smaller number of NASA employees, and as stated numerous times (yet you still ignore) have nothing to do with manned spaceflight, which is the discussion everyone else is having.
I think initial surveys have everything to do with human spaceflight and settlement, but if you don’t see it, I’m not in talking about it with you . If anyone else reading this agrees with Leland, I’d be glad to discuss it here.
Why is the questioner asking why Bezos would put his money into “Blue” at this time? It just shows how contaminated this society is by the notion that private use of your money is a diversion from public use of your money, which of course would always be for the health and wellbeing and curing of all social ills by our benevolent betters.
That’s what’s behind that sort of question.
And yes, I’m all for private charitable uses, contributions and foundations etc., but if everyone with money did all of that all the time we would never have the foundations for new wealth and knowledge to produce real solutions for the betterment of humanity. As opposed to knocking rocks together and Galen’s theories of disease.