Skip to main content

Jeff Bezos plans to set up Amazon-like moon delivery for 'future human settlement'


Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture has reportedly proposed sending a robotic lander to the moon's south polar region by 2020, as an initial step toward an "Amazon-like" lunar delivery system and eventually a permanently inhabited moon base.
As described by the Blue Origin's white paper, the proposal seeks NASA's support for sending a "Blue Moon" lander to Shackleton Crater near the moon's south pole. The lander would be designed to carry up to 10,000 pounds of payload. It could be launched by Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, which is currently under development, or by other vehicles including NASA's Space Launch System or United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5.
"It is time for America to return to the moon — this time to stay," Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. "A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this."
Blue Origin's proposal, dated Jan. 4, doesn't involve flying humans, but rather is focused on a series of cargo missions. Those could deliver the equipment necessary to help establish a human colony on the moon, unlike the Apollo missions, in which the astronauts left "flags and footprints" and then came home.
The prospect of a lunar mission has several companies lining up to provide not just transportation, but also habitats, science experiments and even the ability to mine the moon for resources.
Last year, Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its suborbital rocket, the New Shepard, five times within less than a year, flying just past the 62-mile edge of space and then landing vertically on a landing pad at the company's west Texas facility.
"Once on the surface, the lander's useful payload can be used to conduct science or deploy rovers," the company said. "A robotic arm attached to the lander will deploy to examine the lunar surface with an array of instruments."
Blue Moon is all about cost-effective delivery of mass to the surface of the moon. Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability.— Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder.


Read On :  WordPress
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Microsoft confirms two major updates planned for Windows 10

Microsoft this month reaffirmed that it will issue two Windows 10 upgrades this year, twice the number of 2016 but still shy of the firm's original target. In a presentation 11 days ago at a Microsoft technical conference held in Australia , Bill Karagounis, a director of program management, pointed to a follow-on upgrade that will appear sometime after the Creators Update , which is expected to finalize and ship next month . A slide Karagounis showed during the session -- which was webcast from Microsoft's Channel 9 website included another upgrade this year after Creators as you can see it in below image. It lacked a release date and a more descriptive name other than "Second Update in 2017" . The timeline doesn’t include dates, but it does show that work on the second update should already be well under way, and public testing should start shortly after the release of Windows 10 Creators Update . From the Microsoft blog post : ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nokia 6 goes global, Nokia 5 and 3 also announced

Nokia is back! HMD -ran Nokia brand is making a big showing at MWC 2017 . In addition to the retro reboot Nokia 3310 , HMD Global is also showing off the new Nokia 3  and Nokia 5 , as well as globally launching the Nokia 6 . Nokia 6  The Nokia 6 first arrived to China exclusively earlier this year, but now Nokia has announced plans to make this model available globally. As a refresher, the Nokia 6 comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass , Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor , 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. It features a 16 MP rear camera and an 8 MP front-facing camera , and provides dual amplifiers that HMD Global says will "deliver a 6 dB louder sound than a regular amp."  The handset also supports Dolby Atmos — designed to give audio a more 3D sound effect . It’s worth noting that the global version will differ slightly, due to the fact it will come with Google services, as well as full support for Go...
Post a Comment
Read more