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posted by martyb on Monday May 28 2018, @05:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-takes-a-[moon]-village dept.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin are looking to partner with NASA and ESA to help create settlements on the Moon. However, he implied that he would fund development of such a project himself if governments don't:

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin space venture will work with NASA as well as the European Space Agency to create a settlement on the moon. And even if Blue Origin can't strike public-private partnerships, Bezos will do what needs to be done to make it so, he said here at the International Space Development Conference on Friday night.

[...] To facilitate a return to the moon, Blue Origin has a lunar lander on the drawing boards that's designed to be capable of delivery 5 tons of payload to the lunar surface. That's hefty enough to be used for transporting people — and with enough support, it could start flying by the mid-2020s. Blue Origin has proposed building its Blue Moon lander under the terms of a public-private partnership with NASA. "By the way, we'll do that, even if NASA doesn't do it," Bezos said. "We'll do it eventually. We could do it a lot faster if there were a partnership."

[...] It's important to point out that moon settlement isn't just a NASA thing. Bezos told me he loves the European Space Agency's approach, known as the Moon Village. "The Moon Village concept has a nice property in that everybody basically just says, look, everybody builds their own lunar outpost, but let's do it close to each other. That way, if you need a cup of sugar, you can go over to the European Union lunar outpost and say, 'I got my powdered eggs, what have you got?' ... Obviously I'm being silly with the eggs, but there will be real things, like, 'Do you have some oxygen?' "

So how far is Blue Origin willing to go? Bezos has already committed the company to build rockets and landers. How about rovers, habitats and all the other hardware that a moon base will need? "We'll do anything we need to do," Bezos said. "I hope we don't need to do any of that. I want other people to do it. But if need be, we'll do it."

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross published an editorial in The New York Times (archive) emphasizing a return to the Moon and President Trump's recent Space Policy Directive 2 (here's the first one).

Just don't call it a colony.

Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.

Rebuttal: Dear Jeff Bezos: Forget About The Stupid Moon

Previously: Jeff Bezos' Vision for Space: One Trillion Population in the Solar System
ESA Expert Envisions "Moon Village" by 2030-2050

Related: How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
Bigelow Aerospace Forms New Company to Manage Space Stations, Announces Gigantic Inflatable Module
Blue Origin to Compete to Launch U.S. Military Payloads
2020s to Become the Decade of Lunar Re-Exploration
Blue Origin Conducts its First Successful Suborbital Test Flight and Landing of 2018
Lunar Regolith Simulants Damage Cells
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Serious About Returning to the Moon


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26PM (#685329) Journal

    President Trump did plenty to deserve his "negative" coverage. (Is reporting that Trump said something incredibly offensive "negative", or merely obligatory?) Apparently, negative coverage was not a bad thing for Trump, so the MSM did him a favor. Stuff like attacking the Khans or "grab 'em by the pussy" may have stung a bit later, but early on in the primaries, the negative coverage and Trump doubling down was simply beneficial and helped him stand out in a crowded Republican primary. On this fine Memorial Day, let's pause to consider: Who would have thought pre-2016 that a candidate could survive a "[McCain is] a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured" remark? I'll admit that I didn't at the time, and it was a good lesson for things to come.

    Hillary got dogged by multiple email-related scandals for months, and the email leaks were conflated into one long, overarching scandal for voters. Benghazi was nothing compared to emails, emails, email server, a steady drip of WikiLeaks (just more emails). Although Comey may have been the deciding factor in the election, it was ultimately a situation of Clinton's own making.

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