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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Talks About Space Colonization: ‘A Trillion Humans In The Solar System’

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Coleman Doyle Contributor
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Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and founder of the company Blue Origin, predicts that in the future “we’ll have a trillion humans in the Solar System … have a thousand Einstein’s and a thousand Mozart’s.”

It’ll be a much better civilization for your grandchildren’s grandchildren,” the world’s richest person continued.

Bezos’ comments came at WIRED25, a celebration for the publication’s 25th anniversary. He began by discussing an old interview that aired on TV with Jerry O’Neal, a Princeton physicist, who was an inspiration to Bezos. O’Neal believed that humans could settle on “giant space colonies” that “would hold a million plus people” and would have “rivers and farmland.”

Bezos explained that human life could expand into the solar system and a planetary surface might not be the best option for expansion. “We are starting to bump up against the absolute true fact that Earth is finite” he said.

Bezos also went into detail about his company Blue Origin, which has a mission to “lower the cost of access to space.”

“What Blue Origin is working on doing is lowering the price of admission so that the next generation there can be some you know Mark Zuckerberg’s of space” he said. (RELATED: Trump Is Reining In The Government To Let Elon Musk And Jeff Bezos Get Us Into Space)

Blue Origin has aspirations to send paying customers to space in the “New Shepard” spaceship on a “tourism mission” in 2019.

“I was hopeful it would happen in 2018” Bezos said. “I keep telling the team it’s not a race. I want this to be the safest space vehicle in the history of space vehicles.”

He also discussed the relationship between tech companies and the Department of Defense (DOD). Bezos stated that “we are going to continue to support the DOD,” and “if big tech companies are going to turn their back on the U.S. Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble.”

“This country is a gem, and it is amazing. It’s still the best place in the world. It’s the place where people want to come. There aren’t other countries where everybody is trying to get in,” he continued. “This is a great country, and it does need to be defended.”