Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos Unveil Plans For Space Colonization [View all]

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Source: ABC News

Billionaire Jeff Bezos announced his plans for space colonization on Thursday, starting with the moon. The world's richest man revealed the plans for the secretive project from his spaceflight company, Blue Origin, and announced his plan to create the building blocks for interplanetary travel and settlement.

"We're going to build a road to space," Bezos said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Thursday afternoon, adding that he doesn't know how the colonies would be built but there are "certain gates, certain precursors" that would need to be established to ultimately meet that goal and Blue Origin was going to lead the way.

One key piece of infrastructure is "Blue Moon," the company's lunar lander, which has been in the works for three years, a jeans and blazer-clad Bezos said. "It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay," Bezos said, as a part of a rambling, long-winded talk about space, which planets are best (Earth), and comparing Amazon Prime deliveries to space payloads.

The Amazon founder was referring to comments by Vice President Mike Pence, who said it is the mission of the United States to return Americans to space in the next five years. Despite repeatedly praising Earth as "the best planet," Bezos identified pressing problems such as hunger, poverty, pollution and rampant energy use -- and said he intends to focus on finding solutions for long-range problems before they become "urgent problems." -Read More plus Video.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/blue-origin-jeff-bezos-unveils-lunar-lander-mission/story?id=62941981

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Bezos said he strongly believes that humans could live in ideal environments and create colonies that use heavy industry without subjecting the earth to atmospheric pollution. He also included coming back to Earth, "Earth is the best planet. It is not even close. Don't even get me started on Venus," Bezos said.

Blue Origin's initial goals are a radical reduction in launch costs and establishing resources for space. Blue Origin would begin by sending human's into space in 2019 on New Shepard -- a suborbital vehicle designed for space tourism -- which uses liquid hydrogen, an incredibly efficient fuel source.

(MORE: Thousands of Amazon employees call on CEO Jeff Bezos to tackle climate change).