Jeff Bezos wants to put a trillion humans in space – and promises ‘1,000 Mozarts and Einsteins’
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}File photo :Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster and Crew Capsule mockup at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Isaiah J. Downing -
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos dreams of creating a new space race of humans across our solar system – with a population of one trillion.
The billionaire tech mogul revealed the lofty goal during a speech about Blue Origin, his groundbreaking space transport company.
According to Bezos, who has a net worth of $140 billion, increasing the population dramatically across space could give us countless creative geniuses.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The solar system can support a trillion humans, and then we'd have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be," Bezos boasted during a speech at New York's Yale Club, which was transcribed by Business Insider.
But Bezos warned that "we don't have forever", and that Blue Origin is working on building a "low-cost, highly operable, reusable launch vehicle" to help fulfill his space-faring dreams.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I really want that dynamic life and civilization for our grandchildren's grandchildren. But we've got to get started."
Bezos famously started Amazon in his garage 24 years ago, driving packages to the post office himself.
Since then, the firm has ballooned into one of the world's most valuable companies – and even broke the $1trillion valuation milestone last year.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He says he wants to kickstart space colonies using the same entrepreneurialism, and revealed how he'd been inspired by fellow tech titan Mark Zuckerberg.
"An even more stark example is Facebook. Here's a guy who literally, in his dorm room, started a company — Mark Zuckerberg started a company in his dorm room, which is now worth half a trillion dollars — less than two decades ago," Bezos said.
"How do you get that kind of entrepreneurial [advancement] in space? You need to lower the price of admission right now to do anything interesting in space because it requires so much heavy lifting and so much infrastructure development.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The entry price point for doing interesting things is hundreds of millions of dollars. Nobody is going to do that in their dorm room. You can't have a Mark Zuckerberg of space today.
"It's impossible. Two kids in their dorm room can't start anything important in space today.
"I want to take the assets that I have from Amazon and translate that into the heavy-lifting infrastructure that will [help] the next generation to have dynamic entrepreneurialism in space — kind of build that transportation network.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"That's what's going on, that's what Blue Origin's mission is. If we can do that, then the whole thing will take off and there will be thousands of companies doing creative things."
Blue Origin was set up back in 2000, and is trying to make it significantly cheaper for private organizations to get into space.
The company is developing several different technologies for launching into space and has launched a number of successful flights.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}However, rival firm SpaceX – helmed by Tesla chief Elon Musk – has captured more headlines thanks to countless launches, and its ongoing support of NASA missions.
Jeff Bezos has had a tumultuous few months, after being involved in a major personal scandal.
Earlier this month, Bezos accused a US magazine of trying to blackmail him with the threat of publishing explicit nude photos of the businessman and his mistress.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In an extraordinary public statement, the Amazon billionaire said the alleged threat was an attempt to stop his investigation into how messages between himself and Lauren Sanchez were first leaked to The National Enquirer.
Intimate details of the couple's affair were published in the Enquirer last month - just hours after Bezos announced he and his wife MacKenzie were getting a divorce.
In the sensational statement, Bezos - the world's richest man - said the magazine's publishers AMI had attempted a campaign of "extortion and blackmail" against him.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He claimed an editor acting on the orders of AMI's ferocious chairman David Pecker had approached him with "an offer I couldn’t refuse".
"Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought", Bezos added.
Bezos is currently divorcing his wife in a $140billion split that could be the biggest in history.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This story originally appeared in The Sun.