Jerry Petersen
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said during the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles that he supported the government’s call for manned lunar missions and believes establishing a lunar base is necessary for sustained missions to Mars, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.
Bezos said he would be willing to work with other countries to build facilities on the moon, adding that he loved the Moon Village concept originally proposed by Jan Woerner, head of the European Space Agency.
Bezos’ space technology company is already working to lower the cost of going to the moon by developing its own orbital launch vehicle, dubbed New Glenn, as well as a larger variant called New Armstrong.
Blue Origin also hopes to develop, in partnership with NASA, a concept lunar lander called Blue Moon.
Bezos said his company is willing to work on the project alone, but conceded that “[we] can do it a lot faster through a partnership.”
