Unlikely saviour? Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is aiming for nothing less than to save civilisation itself

JEFF Bezos is a man with a mission. And he’s aiming high. So high, in fact, it’s his ambition to save civilisation from itself.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says he’s happy to spend his billions on his Blue Origins space business in order to save humanity. Picture: AFP

JEFF Bezos is a man with a mission.

And he’s aiming high.

So high, in fact, it’s his ambition to save civilisation itself.

The Amazon founder has opened up in a new interview with Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of German media company Axel Springer.

It casts fresh light on why Bezos is so willing to sink billions into his space technology company Blue Origin.

Put simply, Earth’s too small for Bezos.

He’d rather think big. Interplanetary big.

“Now take the scenario where you move out into the Solar System,” he told Döpfner.

“The Solar System can easily support a trillion humans. And if we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited (for all practical purposes) resources and solar power unlimited for all practical purposes. That’s the world that I want my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren to live in.”

Jeff Bezos has laid out his vision for space-tourism flights that he hopes to bring a ‘golden age for space exploration.’

BABY STEPS

Elon Musk has been getting all the attention for his BFR (Big F******* Rocket) drive to colonise Mars. He wants humanity to get all of its eggs out of the one basket (planet Earth) and spread them around — just in case.

Bezos has ambitions on a similar scale.

He’s just starting out smaller.

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Blue Origin is in the process of testing a small, reusable rocket dubbed New Shepard. It’s role is simply to shuttle paying tourists to the edge of space.

He’s working on a bigger one, though.

New Glenn is intended to boost satellites and humans into orbit.

It’s business with fierce competition.

Musk’s Space X is even now vying for the satellite trade with its Falcon rockets. And work has already begun on building the BFR by the 2020s.

But Bezos is in no rush.

“This is super important to me, and I believe on the longest time frame — and really here I’m thinking of a time frame of a couple of hundred years,” he says. “I get increasing conviction with every passing year, that Blue Origin, the space company, is the most important work that I’m doing.”

It’s because Bezos has cast his mind forward — and doesn’t like what he sees.

Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. and founder of Blue Origin. Picture: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

OUTER LIMITS

“I’m pursuing this work, because I believe, if we don’t, we will eventually end up with a civilisation of stasis, which I find very demoralising,” he told Döpfner. “I don’t want my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren to live in a civilisation of stasis.”

He’s talking about a perceived absolute upper limit civilisation will have on this Earth due to the availability of energy, and room. One day, we must reach a point where progress halts. Here, every effort must be committed to keeping things the same.

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“And it’s happening soon,” he says. “And by soon, I mean within just a few 100 years. We don’t actually have that much time.”

Bezos argues the only escape from this end to human advancement would be to step out into the Solar System.

“By the way, I believe that in that time frame we will move all heavy industry off of Earth and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry,” he says. “It will basically be a very beautiful planet. We have sent robotic probes to every planet in this solar system now and believe me this is the best one.”

But there’s a problem.

Making space economically viable.

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The key, he says, is reusability.

“This civilisation I’m talking about of getting comfortable living and working in space and having millions of people and then billions of people and then finally a trillion people in space — you can’t do that with space vehicles that you use once and then throw away. It’s a ridiculous, costly way to get into space.”

It’s a challenge he continues to work on.

The Blue Origin BE-3 ramping for a successful landing on April 2, 2016 near Van Horn, Texas. Picture: AFP

PERSONAL DRIVE

“Life is full of different risks,” Bezos told Döpfner. “And I think that, when you think about the things that you will regret when you’re 80, they’re almost always the things that you did not do. They’re acts of omission. Very rarely are you going to regret something that you did that failed and didn’t work or whatever. But the acts of omission ... And again, I’m not just talking about business things, it’s like “I love that person and I never told them” and you know 50 years later you’re like “Why didn’t I tell her? Why didn’t I go after it?”.”

That’s why Bezos says he is so willing to cash-in his billions. He says he’s liquidating about $US1 billion every year of Amazon stock to pay for his Blue Origin dream.

“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it. Blue Origin is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune ... And I plan to continue to do that for a long time.”

In this case, it is rocket science.

It’s incredibly difficult to get right.

The risks are astronomical. But so are the potential rewards.

“I am very lucky that I feel like I have a mission-driven purpose with Blue Origin that is, I think, incredibly important for civilisation long-term.,” Bezos says. “And I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that.”