Jeff Bezos Unveils Lunar Plans for Blue Origin

SpaceX isn't the only private company with ambitious plans for space exploration. Blue Origin, funded by Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, may have gotten off to a slower start than SpaceX, but their plans are at least as ambitious.

Yesterday Jeff Bezos unveiled plans for a lunar lander and eventually colonies on the moon and in space.

Near the end of his speech, Bezos praised the goal set by Vice President Mike Pence of landing humans on the Moon by 2024. "I love this," Bezos said. "It's the right thing to do. We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago. It's time to go back to the Moon—this time to stay."

In a configuration with "stretch tanks," Bezos said Blue Moon could carry up to 6.5 tons to the lunar surface, and this would be large enough for a crewed ascent vehicle. This aligns with NASA's vision for a multi-stage lunar lander that involves both a descent vehicle and then a different spacecraft for humans—the ascent vehicle—that will launch back from the surface of the Moon and return the crew to low lunar orbit. Blue Origin will bid on the descent vehicle portion of NASA's lunar lander contract.

Based on their progress so far, I think that Bezos' plans for Blue Origin are ambitious but doable. His long-term goals might be another matter, involving building O'Neill colonies in space.

I don't see that idea being any more possible than Elon Musk's plan for Mars colonies. If had the resources of Musk or Bezos, I'd be loooking at lunar colonies instead.