Jeff Bezos is a tech billionaire and owns Blue Origin, an aerospace company. During a presentation at Washington DC’s convention center, he outlined the plans of his firm. His objective is to take people to the Moon by 2024 and he appears to be confident of setting up a lunar base that will benefit humans. The plan he has in mind is to first send an unmanned aircraft to the Moon. It will carry supplies that it will offload at the destination. That will be the first step for future human missions and his company has been working on it for the last three years.

That is a head start for him and he wants to take advantage of that.

The Guardian reports that during his presentation, Bezos unveiled a mockup of the unmanned Moon lander. He explained that this lander would be able to undertake multiple tasks including sending satellites to orbit the moon. He highlighted the positives of going to the Moon. These, in his opinion, were its proximity to earth, low gravity, and ice content.

Renewed interest in the Moon

The Americans can claim to have put the first man on the Moon. That was in 1969 and since then, the focus of space research has shifted to Mars.

However, President Donald Trump wanted NASA to revisit the Moon and in March, Vice-president Mike Pence emphasized the same. He was more specific. He wanted the space agency to send Americans to the moon’s south pole. He set a timeframe of 2024, which was four years earlier than previous plans. It is interesting to note that Jeff Bezos is also looking at 2024.

Blue Origin has its base in Kent, Washington. Origin is developing rockets for both short trips (for space tourism) as well as for heavy-duty work (launching humans in suborbital flights.) These are the New Shepard rocket and the New Glenn rocket.

The company has already launched the former and will deliver the latter by 2021.

An entrepreneur joins the Moon race

According to the BBC, Jeff Bezos is an entrepreneur who has joined the race to the Moon. He has unveiled a mock-up of a new lunar lander spacecraft. It will carry scientific instruments, satellites, and rovers finally, take humans to the destination by 2024. He says, "It's time to go back to the Moon, this time to stay."

The landing site of Blue Moon lunar lander will be at the south pole of the Moon. The reason is obvious because it has huge ice deposits in craters in the region. Jeff Bezos is serious about putting humans on the Moon because he has a wider vision of a future. He wants to see a situation where people can live and work in space and this can happen only if there is adequate infrastructure. Incidentally, China has already landed its rover on the far side of the Moon and is exploring the region. They also have their eyes on the ice deposits.
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