Strange man
Jeff Bezos says the future is so bright, he “doesn’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now.” Speaking at Italian Tech Week 2025 earlier this month with Ferrari and Stellantis chair John Elkann, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder laid out a plan to launch humanity into orbit — literally.
I wonder if being a billionaire makes it difficult for him to see how other people can be discouraged. Several of those people are not billionaires. Several people have no money at all. Several people have health issues. Several people have problems of various kinds, which can lead to being discouraged.
The conversation started on Earth but didn’t stay there long. Bezos dove headfirst into space — predicting colonies, building data centers off-world, and using the moon as a gas station. “I believe, in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space. That’s how fast this is going to accelerate,” he said.
And that’s a reason not to be discouraged???
Living in space would be horrible.
And seriously. Twenty years from now there will be millions of people living in space?
Come on.
Bezos makes Professor Pangloss sound like Schopenhauer.
“Next couple of decades”! That suggests that he is even more crazy than the orange buffoon.
Next couple of decades plus millions, Millions!!!
Twenty years from now there might be a couple of inhabited space stations in orbit, populated by a handful of people at a time on rotation. And the current ISS won’t be one of them.
Or three, or four. But enough to house MILLIONS? Let alone finding millions who want to do that.
There’s a small problem with this. We don’t know how to live in space. I believe it was from someone posting here on B&W that I learned of the book A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith. Their conclusion? Not soon, not likely. The problem? It’s not only the Rocket Science, it’s the Us Science.
A short list of things we don’t know about (not all from the book, and in no particular order):
Part 1) Rocket science
How to build Really Big Things in space.
How to build Really Big Things that Spin in space.
How to build Really Big Things on moons and planets.
How to build large scale, long term closed loop systems.
How to mine and process materials in space
Part 2) Us science
Sex in space.
Conception, gestation and birth in space.
Growth and maturation in space.
How to grow lots of food in space (see “closed loop system” above).
How to build a community/society/polity in space.
What happens when the Company Town controls the air you breathe?
Etc.
According to Google, the most people launched into space on one flight was 8; and the largest number ofhumans in space at one time up to now has been 19. Millions in 20 years? No. Do we really want that many rockets built* and launched in that period of time? Fuck no.
And what exactly are a million people going to do in space? Is there a need for that many people to go into space? Fragile space stations, and Lunar or Martian colonies are never going to be insurance policies against human extinction (let alone biospheric extinction). As far as we’re concerned, Earth is it. The chances of self-sustaining, off-Earth human settlements are remote. They will always be more vulnerable than Earth. If planetary disaster did strike, rendering Earth uninhabitable, such colonies would be, at best, lifeboats with no one to rescue them.
Questions of time frame and material feasability aside, do we really want corporations or individuals claiming for themselves a Manifest Destiny in space, claiming territories to which they have no right, squandering resources they can buy, but which the planet cannot afford? Are the communitis/societies/polities they dream of spawning going to be bastions of freedom and liberty, when there’s always going to be someone able to pull the plug, or vent the atmosphere? How do we live off the Earth when we haven’t learned (or have forgotten how) to live in it and on it?
*Sure, some will be reusable, or partly so, but you’re going to need a huge fleet, which will be a huge drain on resources, and a huge source of pollution from both construction and launch. Musk’s Starship, which will supposedly carry up to 100 people at once, would require 10,000 launches to loft 1,000,000 people into space. Since 1957, in the total history of space flight, the total number of orbital launches of all kinds, by all nations and companies has been about 7,300. The number of space launches with humans aboard (which also includes suborbital flights)? About 400.
“How to build large scale, long term closed loop systems.”
I like the idea of trying Biosphere 2 again, but without the delusion that we could get it right immediately.
Let’s close it up, see what goes wrong, fix that, close it up. Rinse & Repeat.
After decades of this, we might get something that would work for years without needing to be reopened. This would not only teach us how to live in space, but give us some clues about keeping earth a pleasant place to live.
If millions of people will be living in space in the next couple of decades, we should be working on proof of concept now. So, Jeff, you and yours go live in space now and show the rest of us how it’s done.
YNnB yes the City on Mars rec was here; I rushed to get it from the library and then read it. Good stuff.
Maybe he should start by building a megalopolis at the South Pole, or the bottom of an abyssal plain, and see if people flock there.
Good idea.
Interestingly, if we disregard the Earth (and perhaps one or two of its closest neighbors in the solar system), I share Bezos’ sunny view of the future for the opposite reason. The one thing I am truly optimistic about is that the rest of the universe will be safe from human stupidity and evil. :D
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It was possibly my recommendation of “A City On Mars” you were referring to. I’m glad other people have found the book of interest.
MIT Technology Review recently reviewed three books that were all pessimistic about human space settlement, “A City On Mars” chief among them. I haven’t read either of the other two, but they sound good:
“Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration”, by Savannah Mandel;
“Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race”, by Mary-Jane Rubenstein.
I just requested the City on Mars book from the library. Thanks for the recommendation.
By the two Weinersmiths, yes, that’s the one I was referring to at least. Thank you for alerting us to it!