Jeff Bezos - founder of the Amazon marketplace - said he wants to start building orbital colonies with a climate like Hawaii.
The billionaire spoke about this at a press conference in Washington.
In 1976, the American physicist Gerard O'Neill, in his book High Frontier, proposed a model for an orbital station, which was later dubbed the O'Neill cylinder. It is a cigar-shaped space station revolving around its axis. A ring with a diameter of eight kilometers is attached to its body, inside which people can live. It is assumed that at a certain speed of rotation inside a ring of such a diameter, an attractive force comparable to that of the Earth can be achieved.
Based on O'Neill's cylinder model, the head of Amazon's marketplace unveiled a concept for an orbital colony that he plans to build with his aerospace company Blue Origin.
The orbital colony-reserve as presented by the artist / Blue Origin.
The press conference at which Jeff Bezos announced plans to colonize the orbit was timed to coincide with the presentation of the Blue Moon lander. The billionaire said that although the construction of such settlements is included in his plans, this is unlikely to be done in the near future due to insufficient technology development.
The orbital station outside as seen by the artist / Blue Origin.
According to the head of Amazon, up to a trillion people will be able to live in the colony, and the architecture of the buildings inside the ring will resemble that of the earth. The climate in the orbital settlements will be similar to the Hawaiian one, and residents will be able to forget about earthquakes and other natural disasters forever.
Promotional video:
Orbital colony with futuristic architecture as presented by the artist / Blue Origin.
Bezos began thinking about the development of technologies for the construction of such settlements back in the 1980s, as a student at Princeton. Today, he owns the largest trading floor in the world and is the number one richest person by Forbes magazine with a fortune of $ 112 billion. Jeff Bezos himself says that the future belongs to "dreamers" - people who fantasize and invent technologies that others then put into practice.
Orbital colony with familiar, "earthly" architecture as imagined by the artist / Blue Origin.
Previously, the owner of Amazon revealed plans to deliver cargo to the moon using New Glenn, SLS and Atlas V rockets and the Blue Origin lander under development, Blue Moon.
Nikita Shevtsev