One day the Earth could become a vacation destination, a tourist spot no more and no less than national parks.
The suggestive prediction comes from Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and Amazon, I almost forgot). In a recent interview, the 57-year-old American entrepreneur said he foresees that people born in space will one day take trips and vacations on Earth just as today "we visit Yellowstone National Park".
It is not a series on Amazon Prime.
Bezos didn't limit himself to the concept of Earth as a tourist spot for space natives. He also spoke of orbiting space cities that could house a million people in habitats filled with "rivers, forests and wildlife." It is not the plot of a TV series, but rather a prediction made during a panel discussion this week in Washington. Reminds me of the movie Elysium only?
Over the next few centuries, many people will be born in space, it will be their first home. They will be born on these colonies, they will live on these colonies, so they will visit the Earth only as a tourist spot.
Jeff Bezos
For Bezos, who recently pledged to donate $ 2 billion for wildlife conservation and the development of sustainable food systems, high-tech colonies in space are viable. Very. More viable than any attempt to start a new life on another planet (the reference is Mars, an even veiled criticism of the plans of Elon Musk, whose commercial space venture SpaceX rivals Blue Origin).
Blue Origin versus SpaceX
Musk said he wants to see a million humans colonize Mars by 2050. What does his "bitter" rival Bezos think?
Even if you were to terraform Mars or do something very radical like that, what would that change? Which could be very, very challenging, by the way. Even if I were to do so, at most it would be a duplicate of Earth. We would simply go from 10 to 20 billion people.
Jeff Bezos
And what does the second (right behind Musk!) richest man on the planet have to say about intelligent life? “How could there not be? There are so many stars, right in this galaxy. And then many galaxies. The odds that we are the only intelligent life in the universe seem incredibly small to me.”
