Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos now has Instagram, and his very first post will be pretty hard to top. Bezos posted a drone video showing of a building under construction. As footage zooms to the roof of the building, we see Bezos himself on a lawn chair, holding a sign that reads, "Rocket factory coming soon."
The building is Blue Origin's new rocket factory in Florida, which began construction back in June 2016. It's slated to be an instrumental facility for Bezos' private spaceflight company. Among other things, Blue Origin's massive New Glenn rockets would be built there. "Manufacturing facility for the heavy-lift New Glenn launch vehicle is coming along nicely," says the caption for Bezos' post.
Similar to its New Shepard predecessor, the New Glenn would feature a fully reusable first stage. Bezos is keen to get in on emerging reusable rocket technology, especially in the wake of the recent successes Elon Musk's SpaceX has been racking up. While SpaceX is getting plenty of attention, Blue Origin was actually the first to successfully reuse a rocket — launching and landing the same rocket four times in a row.
It looks like this may all be part of laying the groundwork for Bezo's plan to colonize the solar system — a feat he realizes won't be achieved during his lifetime, as he said in an interview with The Washington Post last year. But, like Musk, Bezos is also eyeing Mars. "Eventually Mars might be amazing," he said. "But that’s a long way in the future."
Share This Article