Jeff Bezos Plan: How To Colonize Moon With Blue Origin!

The Jeff Bezos View On Space

For those of you who don’t know, Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, you know the major website where you likely have bought more things than you care to admit? And throughout his life, he’s had a fascination with space. So much so that it was him who found the Apollo 11 Engines that were jettisoned during the launch of the legendary mission. Does that not sound impressive? Did I forget to mention that he took a submersible to the depths of the ocean to find them? Because he did because he loves space.

He also has a very practical view about space, and why Earth is so special:

“Earth is the best planet,” Bezos quipped. “It is not close. This one is really good. Don’t even get me started on Venus.”

Venus for the record is a planet that is so hot that any attempts to live on it would be extremely difficult not to mention the planet is filled with gasses that we can’t breathe. That’s why he joked about it.

Anyway, for Bezos, he knows that the biggest danger isn’t NOT exploring space, or even failed attempts to get to Mars, it’s staying on Earth when we KNOW that there are finite resources here on the planet.

“What happens when unlimited demand meets finite resources?” he asked. “Rationing.”

“That’s the path that we would be on,” he added. “It would lead for the first time to where your children and grandchildren have worse lives than you. That’s a bad path.”

Which brings us back to space, because he knows that in space we have options, options to live, but also, options on how to make life on Earth so much better. But how is that possible?

Colonies and Resources

Obviously when it comes to exploring space, the plan is to go and create colonies, and Bezos is not only behind this, he feels we need to get this done…yesterday.

“Our choice,” one of Bezos’s plans he laid stated,  “stasis and rationing or dynamism and growth.”

Clearly he is a guy who feels we should go and be dynamic and grow the Earth. He even laid out his plan in part by noting that we need self-sustaining colonies in key places in the universe to act as a sort of “relief” to the population on Earth. After all, if they’re not here taking the resources of others, that gives more for everyone else. Basic supply and demand.

But unlike many, he’s not looking to Mars (unlike NASA and SpaceX among others), he feels that humanity has a lot to get from the moon itself. Not to mention he feels it’d be better and cheaper to try and launch a colony mission there versus one to Mars. And technically, he is right. The problem for a moon colony mission has always been whether we could work with the limited survival resources there. But for Bezos and others, they’re looking at the more financial reasoning to go there. Because what the moon lakes in atmosphere and water, it makes up for in: cobalt, gold, helium, iron, palladium, platinum, tungsten and other resources.

However, just because he thinks the moon is better doesn’t mean it’s any easier to get there. Except, that he has a way to possible do it better, cheaper, and of course, put him and Amazon on the map once again in a big way. He calls it…Blue Origin.

Blue Origin

What is Blue Origin? Well, that would be Jeff Bezos’ personal space company (not unlike what Elon Musk has with SpaceX), and what he is working on is a reusable engine that wouldn’t just send astronauts to the moon, but also send tourists into space. All of which would help make Bezos billions of dollars in contracts from various space agencies since his rockets are currently very advanced. Plus, having reusable rockets saves time from having to build individual ones for each mission. Which obviously can be very costly as well.

Has he actually proven that his rockets work? Yes, actually he has, he has two rockets that he has both in the works and is also testing. One of them is the 59-foot New Shepherd Model. This is the one that he aims to use to put people into space. In May of 2019 he launched and landed one of these powerful rockets without any issue. Early speculation states that he could go and put people into space very soon. Possibly even early 2020 should things work out.

However, he’s not stopping there, he’s also working on a model known as New Glenn, which is 310-feet-tall, and can go much farther than the New Shepherd Model. If this was to be launched, it would be the biggest space vehicle every put into space (the International Space Station doesn’t count for the record).

Should it work, it could be the definitive vehicle to take man back to the moon, and the vehicle that we start putting our hopes of moon colonization on. it’s still early to say it’ll go that far, but Bezos is most definitely banking on that.

The Lunar Lander

If you think that Bezos is stopping with two different kinds of rockets that could land man on the moon…you clearly don’t understand just how determined this man is to get into the space race in his own way. During a presentation in Washington DC he went into detail on some of the things that Blue Origin is working on to help get man back to the moon. One of those things was a new Lunar Lander that could help get materials from the spaceships they make to the surface without much difficulty. As past missions have proven, getting to the surface of the moon is no easy feat. Even the legendary Apollo 11 mission almost botched the landing due to issues with the landing craft.

So why does that matter? Simple, NASA is wanting to get back to the moon by 2024, and so if Bezos is able to make his lander say by…2021? Prove it could work on the moon and more? That saves NASA a TON of time and money trying to make their own to take care of their astronauts. As they say, many hands make light work. And Bezos is going all out to try and make sure that enough work is done so they can launch with his stuff as soon as possible.

The Lunar Motor

Still not done? Of course not, because that would be too easy, and for Jeff Bezos, he doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. As noted earlier, he’s working on not one but two different engines and craft to take into space, both of the reusable nature, but he’s also working on a third right now. One that could be used to put on craft going directly to the moon. Granted, NASA has already proven multiple times that they know how to get to the moon. We’ve done it more times than you might think. But for this engine, not only is it reusable, it’s very likely better than anything that’s been made before in regards to moon missions.

This is important for various reasons, not the least of which is that if Bezos wants to get a moon colony going with his tech, he needs to make sure his stuff is better than the rest. So, if his motor can go faster, use less fuel, be easily fueled and refueled, doesn’t take a lot of damage during flight, etc, it’ll be the dominant engine for moon missions. Especially the colony missions. Thus, he’ll get paid a BUNCH to make more of his engines so a non-stop flow of missions can take place to get the moon colony set up.

But you’re no doubt thinking, “Sure, it makes sense why Bezos wants to go to the moon and such, but why is NASA in such a rush? Weren’t they focused on getting to Mars?”

Well…let’s just say they had a little…nudge…

The President’s Moon Mission

Once upon a time, the mission to get to the moon was THE MOST IMPORTANT MISSION in the HISTORY of mankind. Mainly because the Space Race was going on and both the United States and Russia NEEDED to prove they were superior and to get to the moon first. The United States prevailed…and it was great…but…

Then the wonder started to go away. “Ok, we got there, so what?” In fact, future missions to the moon didn’t get nearly as much buzz save for Apollo 13, and that was because of the danger they were in. The point is, after a while, we honestly didn’t care about going to the moon again outside of pride and ego. But now, the United States government, led by Donald Trump, want to reach the moon once again by 2024, 4 years EARLIER than NASA themselves stated during their estimations. Why is that? Resources:

“As more countries land on the moon, we risk a Wild West situation without clarification of ownership rights,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at space conference in Colorado in April.

That may sound stupid (as the moon isn’t owned by ANYONE), and it kind of is, but that doesn’t mean that people in the government and in NASA aren’t going to take this notion seriously. They want to go to the moon, and get resources there, get colonies there, whatever it takes in order to make the moon American again…see what I did there?

Again, it may sound stupid, but if it works? Then aren’t we as a planet better for it?

The Moon Colonies

Part 1

Ok, so we MIGHT just have a way to get to the moon once again, and we MIGHT have a way to get there repeatedly in order to make moon colonies. But, let’s be honest with ourselves here…what would it take to make a moon colony work? Honestly? A lot.

Let’s start with the basics, we would need to get supplies to the moon for construction. We kind of have that taken care of via the shuttles, engines, and more. Not to mention Elon Musk is working on “space cranes” right now that can help with construction on other planets. No, seriously, he’s working on that.

But that’s just the first hurdle of the lot. Once we get the materials on the moon, we’d need to start building everything. Which as people on the International Space Station will tell you is not easy. If you lose a tool, you can’t just pick it up. Gravity is 6 times lighter on the moon than on the Earth, so that’ll put a stress on construction.

This says nothing of the scale of the production itself. We’d need to make sure it was big enough to fill a whole colony worth of people. That means having it stand a great height, as well as a great width and length. Obviously it wouldn’t need to fit a whole city for the first one, but that would be the goal eventually. Even a town of a colony with like 100 people would need to be big enough to fit that amount of people comfortably. That’s not easy.

And that’s STILL only one of the first hurdles.

Part 2

So let’s say that the outer construction gets done, then we would need to work on the inner construction next, right? Not quite, because if the outer dome is hurt in any way, the whole mission is a loss. Instead, they’d likely work on getting power within the new colony, and then finding a way to institute artificial gravity. Why is that important? Well, the gravity on the Earth doesn’t just keep us on the ground, it keeps us “pressured” in a way so that we are strong. In space, with less gravity, our bones become brittle, which can cause all sorts of problems overtime.

As for the power thing, it’d need to be some kind of generator, maybe one powered by solar energy. After all, we couldn’t possibly do gas or oil because that would not only be limiting, if something went wrong it’d be hard to fix. Or if there is a shortage of oil/gas, we’d be screwed.

There’s also the problem of food and water. Neither of those happen on the moon naturally, so humanity would need to find a way to make it so we can have water and food consistently. Likely by recycling what we have to make water (which is what astronauts do in space), and growing food ourselves…somehow.

As you can see, making a colony isn’t easy, even when it’s close to Earth.

The Odds Of Success For The Bezos Plan

So let’s ballpark it, what are the odds of Bezos plan to colonize the moon with his engines and landers and such? How likely is this whole plan to work? Best guess…? 50%. Which is actually a lot higher than you might expect.

The reasons this could work is that some of what he’s doing is already proven. Elon Musk is working on engines that he feels can get people to Mars, and he’s proven he can do that. Bezos has already tested one of his engines too to great success. Thus, it could work.

Getting stuff into space isn’t impossible either, we proved that with the ISS, and it’s still there many years after being launched into outer space. Same for Satellites, probes, and more.

The real problem is the making of the colony. Everything that they’re stating could work is still theoretical. Yes, we’ve been on the moon, but not for long stretches of time. There’s still a lot of variables here. Not to mention…making a colony is definitely a new thing for us.

Still, having 50% of a plan is better than having 0% of one. And there’s a lot of people who bet on 50% odds.