Bezos to spend $1B yearly on space plans
Amazon founder to sell company stock to invest in his dream
COLORADO SPRINGS Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the secondrichest person on Earth. But he may be willing to forgo that title in order to leave his home planet. He said Wednesday that he plans to sell $1 billion in Amazon stock yearly to invest in his spaceflight services company, Blue Origin.
Bezos made the statement at the 33rd annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
Bezos told the audience his hope is that the space industry will help create a new world by sparking the same kind of intense creativity and dynamism that the Internet has.
While spending down his formidable fortune — currently estimated to be $78.4 billion by Bloomberg — to fund reusable rocket research and space tourism might seem an odd choice, Bezos said last year that it’s all part of a long-held dream.
When he was at Princeton University, Bezos was a chapter leader of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.
According to SEDS co-founder Peter Diamandis, Bezos told him in the 1990s that his plan was to first create an Internet book business, then use the profits to invest in space exploration, according to Air & Space magazine.
When he was awarded the 2016 Heinlein Prize for advancing commercial space activity, Bezos joked that it has all been part of “a simple, two-step plan.”
That planning has paid off. According to Bezos, Blue Origin will begin carrying its first passengers to above the Kármán line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, sometime next year.
There they will be weightless and look out on “the vastness of space and life-changing views of our blue planet,” according to the company.
As for his place on the richest humans list, Bezos is currently $3.8 billion ahead of number three on the list, Warren Buffett.
Where he’ll be on the list, and in the solar system, four years from now isn’t known.