Developments Unveiled
While Elon Musk's SpaceX is the public face of the private space industry, there are other major players trying to bring humanity closer to the stars. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has been working on its own rocket technologies, and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has been revealing more on the work they're doing over at Blue Origin.
The previously secretive Blue Origin has been announcing more of its milestones in its space ambitions. It successfully landed the same rocket four times in a row, with the end goal of reusable rockets that will lower space travel costs.
The company has unveiled its own rocket, the "New Glenn," which dwarfs any of the rockets being developed today. Bezos announced that the Glenn will be ferrying astronauts by the end of the decade.
Along with the engineering developments Blue Origin has announced, Bezos has also shared his predictions on human colonization of space, in an interview with The Washington Post.
A Grand Vision
In the interview, Bezos sees humans spreading out across the Solar System. He envisions "millions of people working and living in space." But to do this, Bezos notes that we will have to figure out how to extract and manage the resources we can get from space, since Earth alone won't be able to provide the materials for space colonization.
Bezos also says we will have to figure out how to harness nuclear technology in space, citing it as a viable alternative to solar power that will dim out as you move farther from the Sun. In fact, moving out into space would not just be a dream, but an imperative. We will have to move heavy industry outside of Earth, in order to preserve it. He envisions the Earth being "zoned" as residential and light industrial.
But does he think we will see space colonization in our lifetime? "Not in the near term... Eventually Mars might be amazing. But that’s a long way in the future."
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