Amazon's Jeff Bezos Wants 1 Trillion Humans in Space

Just 18 years ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos established a company called Blue Origin with goals of one day taking mankind to space. Since then, the company has launched rockets on test flights and recently won a contract to launch government satellites.

The billionaire mogul spoke at the Wired Summit this week where he predicted that one trillion humans will one day populate the solar system. However, that's not in his lifetime (unless these life-extension projects go his way).

"I won't be alive to see the fulfillment of that long-term mission," Bezos said. "We are starting to bump up against the absolute true fact that Earth is finite."

Like Elon Musk who runs the incredibly successful SpaceX, Bezos said he wants to lower the cost of getting past the Earth's atmosphere. He even said that Blue Origin is the most important thing he's working on — more so than the $1 trillion Amazon Corporation that he runs, or the Washington Post or Whole Foods, which Amazon purchased in 2013 and 2017, respectively.

Bezos, recently crowned as the richest man in the world, plans on spending $1 billion of his personal fortune on the project next year. He's excited about competitors and what their technology will bring to the table, too.

"The dynamism that I have seen over the last 20 years in the internet where incredible things have happened in really short periods of time," Bezos said. "We need thousands of companies. We need the same dynamism in space that we've seen online over the last 20 years. And we can do that."

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The CEO, who's been obsessed with space travel ever since he saw the Apollo Moon landing at 5 years old, is worried that Earth's finite resources will eventually run out and humans will have no choice but to leave earth.

Although Blue Origin did win that prominent contract for launching government satellites, Bezos had to defend the decision because of Silicon's Valley's and the US' current political climate.

"We are going to continue to support the [Department of Defense]," Bezos said. "If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble."

Bezos and Musk aren't the only billionaires with galactic ambitions — Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has been testing rockets that will soon take paying tourists into space.

H/T: CNBC