Last week, when he attended the VivaTech conference, held in Paris, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, impressed those present by exposing plans that were only imagined in science fiction. Among them, the billionaire spoke about transferring polluting industries to the Moon, as an environmental alternative for Earth, according to the EFE news agency and the British newspaper The Independent. It’s all part of projects by his aerospace company, Blue Origin, which rivals Elon Musk’s SpaceX, recently in the news due to its record IPO.
During the event, he elaborated on Blue Origin’s long-term vision, stating that removing industrial activities considered polluting from the Earth could be beneficial, allowing the planet to recover characteristics prior to the Industrial Revolution.
— Our long-term vision, our dream, is that all polluting industries can be operated off Earth. This garden planet can return to its pre-Industrial Revolution state. This is the only aspect in which the world is worse today than it was 500 years ago – he said.
InfoMoney Tool
Download now (and for free)!
According to Bezos, one of the first activities to be taken to space could be the operation of data centers focused on artificial intelligence, a sector that continues to receive investment around the world. The businessman believes that the growing demand for data processing will require large technological structures, which could work outside of Earth. However, it is known that these industries depend on a lot of water, which may be scarce on the Moon.
Colonizing the Moon is one of Blue Origin’s main objectives. Although the company has already presented projects related to lunar exploration, this was the first time that the businessman spoke publicly about transferring industrial activities to the Moon on such a large scale, according to the British publication.
Earlier this year, Blue Origin presented a proposal to US regulatory authorities to build a network of more than 50,000 satellites to support workloads linked to artificial intelligence. The company also obtained billion-dollar contracts from NASA to develop landing and launch vehicles for the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the surface of the Moon before the end of this decade.
In addition, the American space agency awarded the company a new contract to transport two exploration vehicles to the Moon, which should assist future manned missions on the lunar surface.
Bezos’ space ambitions are paralleled by businessman Elon Musk’s projects. The richest man in the world also defends the expansion of human presence in space and intends to establish civilizations on the Moon and Mars through SpaceX. Musk has already stated that the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence could be built outside of Earth, considering this alternative the only way to expand the technology’s capabilities.
For Bezos, the Moon would function as a kind of industrial zone of the future. In his vision, factories, data centers and other activities that currently produce emissions and environmental impacts could be moved to space, allowing the Earth to become a more preserved environment.
Continues after advertising
Despite advances, Blue Origin has recently faced difficulties in its lunar projects. The New Glenn rocket exploded during tests on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, causing damage to the company’s facilities. Even so, the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, said he hopes flights will resume before the end of this year.
