Jeff Bezos Wants to Create a Delivery Service for the Moon

However, the space agency has committed to encourage U.S. companies to invest in spaceflight and develop sustainable business plans to commercialize space, and already works with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in providing support and advice to the startup’s ambitious plans to fly to Mars. Others, like launching a Facebook satellite into orbit, have gone less well. The crewmen it carries will be two private customers, who “have already paid a significant deposit”; who “will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration”, pending “health and fitness tests”.

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and space company Blue Origin, wants to make “cost-effective deliveries” to the moon.

Although Blue Origin has launched its dick-shaped New Shepard rocket five times over the a year ago, the company remains notoriously secretive, in stark contrast to its main competitor, SpaceX.

Branson is eccentric and daring enough to want to fly to the moon, so it would follow that he could be the one contracting SpaceX to fly him in a long loop above the lunar surface.

Apparently, the Amazon CEO has urged NASA to create an initiative that “incentives to the private sector to demonstrate a commercial lunar cargo delivery service”, per the documents. Right now, with no crew launch vehicle of their own, NASA is paying out $80 million per seat to the Russians to get its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

He went further that while Musk has the tendency to set ambitious timeframes, SpaceX has a track record of getting things done, including becoming the first private firm to launch a capsule Earth orbit and return it to the planet in one piece back in 2010.

The cargo trucks, launched from Earth, would match speeds with the space train for transfer of human passengers and supplies intended for moon bases. And the lunar fly-around mission could be a step along that path, giving the company important experience in deep space, Larson said.

That flight, originally scheduled to fly without humans in 2018, would also circle the moon. Why choose this as our goal? For Musk, it’s about making humanity a multiplanet species and thus avoiding extinction.

“It’s an ideal landing spot because of the near-continuous sunlight – energy that can power the lander’s solar array”. For more information please visit Tech Times. This seems probable for several reasons-costs, the geopolitical significance of the Moon, and water resources at the lunar poles that could provide the foundation of an in-space fueling system for rockets and spacecraft.