Billionaire Jeff Bezos is grateful to Amazon employees and customers for making his brief stay in space possible. He said this today after flying a rocket from his own company Blue Origin to the edge of space. He is also “stunned” at the “beauty and fragility” of our planet, it said. Critics believe that Bezos would be better off investing his money in the Earth than in expensive space travel.
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Latest update:
20-07-21, 23:39
Source:
Belga, Business Insider
“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer for paying for all this,” Bezos said at a press conference after the landing. “Truly, to every Amazon customer and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really appreciate it.”
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Blue Origin’s first manned commercial flight was also the first flight with a paying passenger, marking a new step for space tourism. In addition to Bezos, there were three other astronauts in the capsule: his brother Mark, American astronaut Wally Funk who became the oldest person in space at 82 years old, and 18-year-old Dutchman Olivier Damen, now the youngest person in space.
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The Earth is a small, fragile thing and when we move around on this planet, we do damage.
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“All the people who have been in space have said that that journey has changed them and that they have been amazed and amazed by the Earth and its beauty, but also its fragility, and I fully agree,” the Amazon said. founder after flying the New Shepard launch vehicle up to 100 kilometers above Earth.
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Earth is “a small, fragile thing and if we move around this planet, we do damage,” he said. “It’s one thing to acknowledge that, but it’s another to see with your own eyes just how vulnerable she really is.”
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“Should take longer”
“I loved every minute of it, I just wish it had lasted longer,” said Wally Funk. She is an astronaut, but as a woman has never had the opportunity to go to space. She said she was “impatient” to return to space.
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Bezos is the second billionaire to go into space this month. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, spent more than $840 million (about $713 million) on a similar trip earlier this month.
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Criticism
Critics decry Branson and Bezos’ space trips, arguing that the money they use to build their rockets would be better spent on tackling the climate crisis or other problems facing humanity.
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However, both billionaires argue that they are creating new economic opportunities by making space travel more accessible.
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“I say they are largely right,” Bezos said in an interview with CNN this week about the criticism. “We have to do both. We have many problems here on Earth, and we need to address them.”
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Bezos has already invested in initiatives to tackle the climate crisis, including the Bezos Earth Fund, in which he invested $10 billion. This nonprofit invests in “scientists, NGOs, activists and the private sector to drive the development of new technologies, investments, and changes in policy and behavior,” said CEO Andrew Steer. “We will emphasize social justice as climate affects poor and marginalized communities the hardest,” he added.
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