Bezos said the two companies are actually quite “like-minded in a lot of ways.”
“The whole space industry is too small,” Bezos said. “The reason is, we don’t fly very often. If airplane flights cost the same as in 1940, that would also be a small industry today….we need to get there.”
Building rockets that are reusable is the key to getting “millions of people living and working in space,” Bezos said. When rockets are reusable and don’t need much refurbishing, that means the can endure more practice runs. And more practice runs means learning more details that can be used to innovate faster, he said.
“Amazingly, we humans get better at everything we practice. And one of the reasons that we haven’t made as much progress in space flight …. over the past 50 years, is that we haven’t been able to practice that much,” Bezos said. “Anything you do a dozen times a year, you never get truly great at.”
The company’s New Shepard capsule is designed to feature big windows to let tourists get a taste of space. It’s not clear what the ticket prices would be yet, Bezos said, but he’s “determined” to bring costs down to the level of airplane tickets over time. He said that passengers would ideally need less than a day of training to ride the rockets.
While the company will one day be a “thriving enterprise,” Bezos joked it’s going to be a long road. One of the company’s rockets, New Glenn, will cost at least $2.5 billion, Bezos said.
“My business model right now for Blue Origin is I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock and use it to invest in Blue Origin,” Bezos said.
