We’d like extra people. That’s the message from two of the world’s richest billionaires, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Whereas the 2 compete in the space business—Bezos owns Blue Origin whereas Musk has SpaceX—they agree on sure facet’s of humanity’s future.
“I believe in loads of these endeavors we’re very like-minded,” Bezos stated on an episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast launched this week. He added, “I do not actually know Elon very properly,” however he stated that he preferred the thought of forming a friendship with him.
Requested what he hoped for humanity’s future in outer area lots of or hundreds of years from now, he replied:
“I’d like to see, you recognize, a trillion people dwelling within the photo voltaic system. If we had a trillion people, we’d have at any given time a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins…Our photo voltaic system can be lively and intelligence and power.”
What corporations like Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing, he stated, is creating the area infrastructure upon which future generations can construct higher issues.
“After I began Amazon, I did not should develop a cost system. It already existed. It was referred to as the bank card,” he stated. “I did not should develop a transportation system to ship the packages. It already existed. It was referred to as the postal service and Royal Mail and Deutsche Publish. And so all this heavy lifting infrastructure was already in place. And I may stand on its shoulders.”
He stated that he needed to make use of his “Amazon winnings” to construct heavy infrastructure that can be utilized by the area entrepreneurs of future generations.
“When you’ll be able to have a extremely precious area firm began in a dorm room, then we all know that we have constructed sufficient infrastructure in order that ingenuity and creativeness can actually be unleashed,” he stated. “I discover that very thrilling.”
He envisions individuals dwelling in large area stations, which have “loads of benefits over planetary surfaces,” together with the power to spin them to create regular gravity. He stated most individuals would need to stay close to Earth and go there for trip, “the identical means you would possibly go to Yellowstone Nationwide Park.”
He sees the Earth’s setting being preserved by heavy manufacturing shifting into area, profiting from assets on the moon and the asteroid belt.
As for Musk, he’s lengthy harassed the necessity for humanity to change into a multi-planet species, and he envisions SpaceX’s Starship rockets transporting individuals between Earth and Mars, the place a everlasting human presence can be established.
“We don’t need to be a kind of single planet species, we need to be a multi-planet species,” he said in 2021 after SpaceX despatched astronauts into orbit on a reused rocket.
He’s additionally warned about an “underpopulation disaster” right here on Earth. In the summertime of 2022, he said the declining delivery charges seen in many countries introduced “the largest hazard civilization faces by far.”
A couple of years earlier he had warned, “The most important drawback the world will face in 20 years is inhabitants collapse.”
This weekend, he sounded related warnings whereas attending a political pageant in Italy staged by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“It’s essential to have kids and create the brand new era,” he informed attendees. “So simple as it sounds, if individuals should not have kids there isn’t any new era.”
Earlier this 12 months, after China launched figures exhibiting a plummeting delivery fee, Musk tweeted: “Inhabitants collapse as a consequence of low delivery charges is a a lot larger danger to civilization than world warming…mark these phrases.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
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