“The planetary surfaces are just way too small.”
Habitat Prime
If it were up to Amazon founder and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos, we’ll all be living inside massive cylindrical space stations one day, floating through the distant corners of our solar system while longingly staring back at the Pale Blue Dot we once called home.
During a recent interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Bezos said that these habitats, like those first described by science-fiction writer Gerard K. O’Neill, could allow an astronomical number of humans to survive.
“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system,” he told Fridman. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.”
“The only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations,” Bezos added. “The planetary surfaces are just way too small.”
Baby Einsteins
The Blue Origin CEO’s vision is surprisingly different from his number one space competitor and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s, who claims to be working towards making humanity “multiplanetary” and establishing cities on other planets like Mars.
But the Amazon founder’s vision of what Earth will become is more sobering. Our planet would end up becoming a holiday destination, allowing us to hop on a shuttle to visit it, the “same way that you might go to Yellowstone National Park,” he told Fridman.
Bezos also argued that future humans would have the choice to either live on an Amazon O’Neill colony or back on Earth — which sounds, let’s face it, a bit reductive and self-serving.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the CEO is also optimistic about the future of AI, telling Fridman that people are “overly concerned” about the dangers of the tech.
As far as his arch-rival is concerned, Bezos stopped short of throwing jabs at Musk, arguing that he “must be a very capable leader.”
“I don’t really know Elon very well,” he added.
And who knows, maybe Amazon’s future space habitats will welcome people with open arms when the climate worsens to the point where living on the Earth’s surface is no longer a viable option — something the CEO’s had plenty of involvement in himself.
Thanks to his company’s robust e-commerce tech, the next protein block will be just one click away. Thanks, Jeff!
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