Jeff Bezos is giving Elon Musk a run for his money with Blue Origin
Tech Industry
Tonight, Jeff Bezos want to build a road to space, now he hasn't been driven insane by the billions of dollars hands, that the idea behind his space company Blue Origin.
But who will build this road, how long it will take, and is it gonna be anything like rainbow road, because if so, we'll never finish it.
I am Claire Reilly for C net, welcome to watch this space
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From the CNET studios in Sydney this is your guide to everything on earth you need to know about space.
And tonight we're taking you behind the scenes at blue origin.
The space company hit it up by the richest man who wants to take the world's richest people Into space and beyond.
Blue Origin isn't new to the space game.
Founded by Jeff Bezos in the year 2000, because nothing says dot com bubble like the the CEO of an internet company, deciding he wants to make rockets now Blue Origin has two major goals.
One, to develop salt over the rocket to send passengers into microgravity and, two, to develop spacecrafts to take humans and cargo into near earth's orbit and further.
They kind of gone for higher to get commercial pilots into space So step one, build rockets, step two, something something.
Step three row to the future.
Sound familiar, yeah.
Blue Origin might not be as well known as Space X, but maybe that's because their C Does a little less of this, and a little more of this.
There's also the fact that Blue Origin hasn't had as many high profile launches and they haven't actually launched any rockets into orbit yet.
But if Space X is the cool, pot-smoking rocket company with the sports car, then Blue Origin is the quite achiever, driving its science projects to physics club on the weekend in the back of its Toyota minivan.
Yeah, in this metaphor I've somehow managed to turn this guy into the jock.
But if you think Blue Origin is the poor man's SpaceX, that's where you're wrong.
It's the rich man's SpaceX.
Quite literally the richest man.
Which brings us to this week's edition of, Know Your BAE-ZOS.
Jeff Bezos, you may remember him from such films as The National Enquirer is blackmailing me over my nudes.
And Amazon because you're lazy.
Jeff Bezos has had the kind of career that feels a bit like a personal attack if you spent your entire 20s studying Renaissance theater history, and I don't know, listening to the back catalogue of Dolly Parton.
Yes ma'am, I made great life choices.
Anyway, Pacers worked in hedge funds in his 20's, founded Amazon at the age of 30, and now owns the Washington Post.
So he doesn't have to lie about his achievements on the annual Christmas card.
And if you think this guy looks like Dr Evil, then you're right because he literally is worth 100.
$1 billion.
Yes, I just made that reference.
No, I'm not sorry, and no, it's not 1997.
Space isn't just a jaunty side project for Bezos.
This is a guy that's really interested in the future.
Remember, that's where his space road is going, to the future.
He's interested in how the next century is gonna be shaped by machine learning, automation, robotics, and space.
How do we know?
Because that's the name of the super secret futurism retreat that he runs every year in Palm Springs.
Get ready to feel poor and stupid, run the tape.
This is Mars, no, not that Mars.
There we go, this is the Mars conference, a yearly getaway for tech influencers and astro-preneurs.
It's focused on machine learning, automation, robotics and space.
Held in Palm springs in mid march.
The conference is like a wellness retreat for nerds and venture capitalists.
Imagine Gwyneth Paltrow's goop.
Well, don't imagine her goop, imagine the wellness website goop.
But instead of shaman herb cleanses and recipes for Sex Bark, look it up if you don't believe me.
Mars is a little bit different.
Replace Gwyneth Paltrow with the world's richest man.
Take away the activated quartz eggs and replace them with dragonfly drones or giant neck suits or yoga robots.
If Blue Origin is how Jeff Basos plans to get to space, then the Mars conference is kind of like the inflight magazine.
Full of stuff that you can buy, influencers that you can network with, and of course, ideas you can actuate in your Tony Robbins dream journal.
Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin have some serious goals on their road to space.
And just like that other master of metaphorical highways, Kenny Loggins, they're gonna have to ride into the danger zone.
The first space craft pushing it to the limit, New Shepard.
Named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard, this reusable rocket is designed to take human passengers to the edge of space.
On their 11 minute flight, passengers will travel just past the common line.
Where they'll experience weightlessness and quote unparalleled views of earth.
New ship that has been flying since 2015 recently launching on it's 10th mission which took NASA sponsored research project into microgravity.
Blue Origin hopes to fly human passengers on new ships as soon as 2019.
And then there's New Glenn.
No, that's not the name of the new step dad that your mom brought home from her weekly bridge club New Glenn is a reusable rocket designed for missions further out in orbital space.
New Glenn is almost as big as the Saturn Five Rocket which took Apollo 11, in to space.
And Blue Origin says it has twice the payload volume of any other existing launch vehicle.
It can also be reused on up to 25 flights and can take off and land in 95% of weather conditions.
So it's really been build as a good commercial option for third parties wanting to send cargo into space.
The company is hoping to get New Glenn into service in the 2020s.
By then Blue Origin will finally fulfill its destiny of being the rheumatoid or minivan that can take your science projects on a road trip.
All right, that's it for this week's edition of what's this space.
If you've enjoyed our program and be sure to click the like button on your remote and subscribe to get more space news as it happens.
I'm Clare Ride for CNET.
Good night, and good speed.
