Jeff Bezos took some time out from his dick pic scandal to give a private talk at the Yale Club in New York.

The talk only lasted half an hour, but Bezos managed to cram a lot in. He outlined his plans for his private aerospace company, Blue Origin, questioned the capabilities of space tourism competitor, Virgin Galactic, and criticised Elon Musk’s plans to move everyone to Mars.

He also advocated for a “Mark Zuckerberg of space” which sounds terrifying. The Mark Zuckerberg of Earth is bad enough.

During the talk, Bezos was in conversation with Jeff Foust, an author at SpaceNews. You can read the full transcript here. In the meantime, here’s Business Insider with the highlights:

After playing the following video of New Shepard’s 10th flight, Bezos said the company will use the rocket to launch its first people into space, although not into orbit, sometime in 2019:

Here’s what he had to say about it:

Bezos: We’re getting very close to putting humans inside. That’s going to be our barnstorming.

Foust: And the goal is to start flying people?

Bezos: This year. This is the first time I’ve ever been saying, “this year.” For a few years, I’ve been saying, “next year.”

We have tested our escape system very successfully, it has performed beautifully in full envelope. We’ve tested high-altitude escape, pad escape, Max Q — maximum dynamic pressure — escape, transonic. So we’ve tested all of the envelopes there for escapes — one of the most complicated things that we’ve done.

The booster is performing very well, and we now have two boosters there in Texas for the first time. The reusability… is working very well. So we’re in very good shape. But I do keep reminding the team — and I’m relentless on this — that it’s not a race. We will fly one flight this year — humans, I mean — but we will fly when we’re ready.

Bezos says that the purpose of New Shepard is to ‘practice’ – something that he sees as crucial to space travel and tourism.

As for why he wants to go to space? His answer reveals some insight into humanity:

Bezos: We want to go to space to protect this planet. That’s why the company’s named Blue Origin — it’s the blue planet that’s where we’re from. But we also don’t want to face a civilization of stasis, and that is the real issue if we just stay on this planet — that’s the long-term issue.

This planet is actually finite. People have been predicting that the planet is finite for a long time, and they’ve always been wrong, seemingly. You can go back decades and people have predictions that we’re going to run out of this mineral or that mineral, and it hasn’t turned out to be true.

…The solar system can support a trillion humans, and then we’d have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be.

He also had some advice for aspiring business people:

Vision is absolutely important, but it doesn’t deserve your day-to-day attention. You need a vision, then, that’s a touchstone: It’s something you can always come back to if you ever get confused. But mostly, your time should be spent on things that are happening today, this year, maybe in the next 2 or 3 years.

…So I would always encourage people to hold, powerfully, a vision and be so stubborn of it. Don’t let anybody move you off of your vision. But put the vast majority of your energy and attention on things that are in a kind of 2- to 3-year timeframe. Then the sub-division will be a kind of emotional guide to that — the gut intuition guide — to those more near-term activities.

The way he’s going, space tourism is one of the short-term goals we can look forward to.

[source:businessinsider]