This kind of thing is motivated reasoning. Elon is guilty of it too. They want to play with space technology, then go searching for moral justifications that don’t add up.<p>Anything we might do in space or to try to live on Mars is much-much (much) more difficult than fixing what problems we have on Earth to keep it healthy and habitable. These people would be better spending money here if they really cared.
Warning: Opinion<p>I’m a little conflicted, Amazon as a company has enabled an even greater level of wasteful consumerism. Bezos seems to be trying to solve a problem he has helped accelerate.<p>I just don’t know how many other ways you can try to take on a mission like Blue Origin without building a massive fortune off of current unsustainable practices.<p>Kind of seems like digging a bigger hole and using profit off of dirt sales to fund an experimental dirt filling business.<p>Plus, how much impact could someone like Bezos have in the reversal of desertification and expansion of practices like permaculture? That would seem like a way to extend the timeline for space exploration while helping preserve what we currently have on Earth.
Pretty ironic for this to land on Prime day, literally an orgy of splurging on underpriced cheap junk to be next-day shipped in brown cardboard boxes right to everyone's door.
Yeah, right. So we can't afford to feed, house and cloth a large percentage of the world's population yet we're somehow going to send them all into space?#@% Sorry, does not compute. As far as I'm aware no-one has discovered oxygen on either the Moon or Mars so, again, does not compute.
Silver bullet solution to a lead bullet problem.<p><a href="https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/" rel="nofollow">https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/</a>
I'm biased but I would think that if someone chooses to invest on space on it would make sense to reach out and assist non-profits that work on developing open space technologies too.<p>Disclaimer: I'm part of one such organisation
The future can't come fast enough. Resource extraction being off-world would be a huge boon environmentally and I can't think of a better use of resources to help preserve our species.
What load of junk.<p>If he is worried about saving the Earth. For the price of a single rocket, he could seriously change the politics of Climate Change.
Is it not obvious that surviving in space or the moon or mars is infinitely more difficult than just changing our ways? Bezos has been consumed by his own bubble of existence. He fantasizes about a world where only he can afford to exist, assuming I guess that he'll achieve immortality. The earth would be better off with him not on it.
So we can go and destroy another planet? Better to invest billions in teraforming tech and cleanup on Earth. This will benefit all and not just the rich. I also wonder how much carbon emission building and sending rockets to space produces.
with the way the rocket equation works (fuel is always a fixed percentage of the payload), I'm very doubtful there will ever be an economic incentive to mine materials in space, or manufacture anything without a huge price / weight ratio. space is not really an option, we've got only one place and people like bezos will ruin it while pretending there's a plan b.