WASHINGTON – Billionaire chairman of Amazon and founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, unveiled the space company’s lunar lander for the first time Thursday.
Blue Origin, which was established nearly 20 years ago, has been working on multiple space systems at the same time.
A mock-up of the lunar lander was revealed on stage, with Bezos telling the audience of media and space industry executives it will take scientific payloads, and eventually humans, to the moon.
Stating “It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay,” Bezos noted the moon is a good place to begin manufacturing in space because its gravity is lower than on Earth.
Bezos also unveiled the company’s BE-7 rocket engine, which he said would be test fired for the first time this summer.
“It’s this generation’s job to build that road to space so that the future generations can unleash that creativity,” Bezos said. “When that is possible, when the infrastructure is in place as it was for me in 1994 to start Amazon, when we have that in place…for the future space entrepreneurs, you will see amazing things happen. It will happen fast….so creative once they are unleashed.”
Blue Origin’s most visible program so far has been its Shepard Rocket System, which the company is developing to send tourists to the edge of space for 10 minutes.
