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Jeff Bezos reveals ambitions to set up city on the Moon

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Published: 03:34, 24 May 2017   Update: 15:18, 26 July 2020
Jeff Bezos reveals ambitions to set up city on the Moon

Risingbd Desk: While Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX may have ambitions to set up a colony on Mars, Jeff Bezos, CEO of rival, Amazon, is setting his sights slightly closer to home.

In a talk this week, Bezos has revealed that wants to colonise the moon.

And his plans don't just involve sending a handful of people to live on the lunar surface, as he has said that he 'want(s) to see millions of people living and working in space.'

Bezos, who owns space firm, Blue Origin, was speaking during a Q&A with children at Seattle's Museum of Flight, according to GeekWire.

He said: 'I think we should build a permanent human settlement on one of the poles of the moon.

'It's time to go back to the moon, but this time to stay.'

This isn't the first time that Bezos has talked about moon missions.

In March, Bezos announced plans to ship packages to the moon by 2020 to help set up a human settlement.

But this week, he went into further detail about his aspirations for Blue Origin to set up a huge colony on the moon.

Bezos said: 'There's a long history of tourism and entertainment driving innovations in technology.'

As an example, he mentioned that advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence are being driven by improvements in graphics processing units (GPUs).

He said: 'Why were GPUs invented? For one purpose, and one purpose only: They were invented by Nvidia for playing video games.'

Blue Origin is currently developing a BE-4 engine for its New Glenn rockets that the firm plans to test in just three years.

Bezos said: 'That vehicle will fly in 2020 for the first time.'

When asked about the link between artificial intelligence and space, Bezos said that AI will help to develop 'even better robotic probes to explore the solar system.'

Currently, rovers on Mars have to wait for instructions to come from mission controllers on Earth before taking action.

Bezos said: 'That's one of the reasons that you get to cover very little ground with those rovers.

'But if you had really good self-driving technology, machine vision and other things, those rovers could keep themselves safe and they could go faster and explore much more in a given amount of time.'

Rovers like these could also be used to build a city on the moon, according to Bezos.
He added: 'There, you would want to pre-position a whole bunch of equipment and supplies before the humans show up, and some of those things might need to be assembled on the surface of the moon.

And that's the kind of thing that could also be done by advanced robotics with machine-learning systems on board.'

In terms of location, Bezos has pinpointed the moon's poles as the most habitable.

These polar regions contain craters that are thought to have reserves of ice that could provide water for drinking, oxygen for breathing, and hydrogen for fuel.

Bezos' ambition for a settlement on the moon drives from his concern that as the Earth's population grows, we will no longer be able to meet demands for energy or resources.

As that starts to happen we will need to look to territories beyond the moon.

Bezos added: 'I want to see millions of people living and working in space.'

 

Source: Mail




Risingbd/May 24, 2017/Mukul

 

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