Jeff Bezos has unveiled his great plan on how humans can stay on the moon. His idea builds upon the concept that was introduced many decades ago by a physicist Gerard O’Neil. Jeff Bezos studied under Gerard when he was studying at Princeton. Jeff Bezos has outlined self-sustaining space habitats that will be able to house entire cities, national parks, and even agricultural areas in space.
Although such a future might seem quite distant, Bezos says that it will make as an ‘easy choice’ when we are face to face with reducing resources on Earth. The space habitats remind us of the film Interstellar. However, the only difference being that they will be built close enough to Earth to enable people to travel easily. They will be able to house ‘a million people or more each’. Jeff Bezos has also said that they will have ‘ideal climate’ at all times similar to ‘Maui on its best day, all year long.’
Bezos also said, ‘These are beautiful, people are going to want to live here. And they can be close to Earth so that you can return, which is important because people are going to want to return to Earth. They’re not going to want to leave Earth forever. They’re also going to be able to go between.’
During the invite-only event that was held in Washington DC on May 9th, Jeff Bezos also said, ‘We get to choose, do we want stasis and rationing, or do we want dynamism and growth? This is an easy choice. We know what, we want we just have to get busy. If we’re out in the solar system, we can have a trillion humans in the solar system – which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.’
The idea is for these habitats to rotate in space, thus giving birth to artificial gravity because of the centrifugal force. Bezos said, ‘These are very large structures, miles on end, and they hold a million people or more each.’ There would be no rain, no storms, and no earthquakes on these habitats. He further added, ‘Some of them would be more recreational – they don’t all have to have the same gravity – they can have a recreational one that keeps it zero-g so you can go flying with your own wings.’ He suggests that travelling between different habitats or space colonies would be like taking a day trip.
Jeff also understands that this will take time to build. He said, ‘This is going to take a long time, this is a big vision. The price of admission to do interesting things in space right now is just too high.’ Let’s see how this vision comprising of space habitats of Jeff Bezos comes to life!