Will Amazon one day provide free two-day Prime shipping to the moon? Probably not, but the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos does have a plan in which the company would build a system to ship supplies to future moon settlements.
The Washington Post — which is also owned by Bezos — reports that Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin wants to develop a lunar spacecraft project, dubbed Blue Moon, with NASA that would deliver gear, cargo, and other goods to assist in the habitation of the moon by 2020.
The project, described in a white paper sent to lawmakers and NASA, doesn’t focus on sending people to the moon, but instead providing them with needed products after they’ve arrived.
Still, Bezos addressed the project at an awards event hosted by Aviation Week on Thursday night, Ars Technica reports, noting that the CEO believes the project has the “intent over time to building a permanently inhabited human settlement on the moon.”
Blue Moon’s lander would likely travel atop NASA rockets and would land at Shackleton Crater, an area of the south pole that contains ice and continuous sunlight, carrying as much as 10,000 pounds of cargo.
After landing, the spacecraft would be able to assist in science experiments and deploy rovers. In fact, the Post reports that a robotic arm attacked to the lander would use a variety of instruments to examine the moon’s surface. This could enable to service to also bring samples back to earth.
Blue Origin, which has been kept under wraps for the most part, has successfully launched and landed its suborbital, phallic-looking rocket, the New Shepard, five times within less than a year, the Post reports.
by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist