Jeff Bezos Wants Us All to Leave Earth—for Good
It’s July 17 and the temperature in the West Texas desert is marching, predictably, toward 100 degrees. But the air is cool inside the one-story prefab building where Jeff Bezos, wearing a North Face hiking shirt and a cap emblazoned with an Amazon Robotics logo, is attentive, back straight, listening. It’s only Tuesday, but the week has already been eventful. His company’s annual Prime Day sale proved so popular (good) that it temporarily took down the website (terrible). Amazon workers in Europe are striking. And the previous day, the price of Amazon stock had hit a threshold that put Bezos’ wealth at $150 billion, making him officially the richest person since people started keeping score.
It’s a number so huge that the Amazon CEO can painlessly siphon off a billion dollars every year to fund his boyhood dream: his other company, Blue Origin. Bezos’ money, earned from Amazon, has paid for the building where he sits, the air-conditioning, and the 60-foot rocket lying on its side in a nearby hangar, waiting to be tugged to a launchpad and shot into the thermosphere. Also, the salaries of about 1,500 Blue Origin workers, including the 35 or so engineers in the room and another 10 or so on a video screen, dialed in from the company’s headquarters in Kent, Washington. As they run down the checklist for the next day’s launch of that rocket, the New Shepard, Bezos sits near the back, not checking his phone even once. He asks one question—do the helicopters that will track the rocket’s flight know that weather balloons will be in the area? (Yep. Check.)
