Elon Musk has a new neighbor. Jeff Bezos ‘s Blue Origin has just moved to Cape Canaveral in Florida in a bid to bring his vision of space travel and exploration closer to fruition.
Jeff Bezos names Cape Canaveral the home of his Blue Origin commercial space program http://t.co/PEUx4UY7lL pic.twitter.com/ZNA2NqvmW2
— CNNMoney (@CNNMoney) September 16, 2015
The Amazon creator founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of developing technology that could one day assist in enabling people to travel to space. The company has been relatively low-key in its expansion and exploration, but the move to Florida appears to signal Bezos’ plan to be more active in the area of space exploration. It will certainly amp up the competition between Bezos, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Blue Origin is set to take over the historical Cape Canaveral launch site and the billionaire is said to be investing $200 million to build a rocket-making facility at the site that would eventually create more than 330 jobs.
The facility will be situated next to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the rockets coming out of Blue Origin will blast off from the revamped launch complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Amazon CEO has been very open about his love for space, even sharing his vision of “millions of people living and working in space” with his numerous employees. Bezos made his announcement on Sept. 15 at the launch site.
“As a kid, I was inspired by the giant Saturn 5 (Apollo moon) missions that roared to life from these shores… Today, we’re thrilled to be coming to the Sunshine State for a new era of exploration.
The launch site, Complex 36, has seen 145 historical launches, among them the Mariner missions and the Pioneer 10. The former were the missions that launched the first spacecraft that flew by Mars, Mercury, and Venus, while the latter was the first spaceship to travel through the asteroid belt.
It’s Jeff Bezos vs. Elon Musk and Richard Branson — in space http://t.co/ycycWkNlR4 pic.twitter.com/D1lwadslVc
— TIME.com (@TIME) September 16, 2015
Bezos’ announcement of his plans for Blue Origin was surprising. Unlike its contemporaries SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, the company kept relatively quiet about its plans for space exploration and preferred the incremental approach to space flight, meaning each developmental step the company makes is built on its prior work.
Virgin Galactic: Richard Branson sees Australia to London two-hour flights http://t.co/mfULSYNcf5 pic.twitter.com/DwrJ3tsF2r
— Stuff.co.nz News (@NZStuff) September 16, 2015
However, the news of Blue Origin’s arrival at Florida’s Space Coast is timely, especially in the wake of several unfortunate setbacks the past year. One of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blew up in June during a cargo mission to the International Space Station while Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two was involved in a fatal crash during a test flight.
[Image via YouTube ]
