- Jeff Bezos dreams of a trillion people living throughout the solar system on gigantic space stations.
- This is how humanity can prosper without depriving planet Earth of valuable resources, according to Bezos.
- Business Insider asked experts about how realistic Bezos’ plan is. Here’s what they said.
When it comes to space exploration, Jeff Bezos dreams big.
“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins,” he told podcaster Lex Friedman in a 2023 interview.
To realize this dream, Bezos envisions a future beyond his lifetime where humans live on giant space colonies floating across our solar system, not on planets like Mars. “Planetary surfaces are just too small” to fit everyone, Bezos told Fridman.
According to Bezos, leaving Earth would allow the human race to grow and prosper without destroying our planet.
Business Insider asked four different types of experts — from architects to astrobiologists — their thoughts on Bezos’ plan. Here’s what they said.
Jeff Bezos’ space colonies would look like cylinders
In Bezos’ futuristic fantasy, we all relax in space stations that resemble a concept called O’Neill cylinders, named after physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, who first proposed them in the 1990s 1970.
“Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision is inspiring, but it is absolutely enormous,” said independent researcher Anthony Longman. architect who developed a concept for spatial habitats intended to accommodate around 8,000 people.
That’s significantly larger than the International Space Station, which typically has seven astronauts on board at any time.
But a space habitat with 8,000 humans is nothing compared to the O’Neill colonies which could house several million people and span about 500 square miles, or as big as San Antonio, Texas, inside.
Externally, these space colonies would measure 20 miles long, four miles wide and rotates to generate artificial gravity for the humans on board.
O’Neill believed we could establish natural ecosystems, bodies of water, and even weather systems indoors. From there, we could build farms, mass transit systems, and bustling cities.
“I’m not saying they won’t be built, but I think it’ll probably be a few hundred years before we’re able to build anything on that scale,” Longman said of the O colonies. ‘Neill.
Bezos is not suggesting people will be living in O’Neill’s space colonies by the end of the century. Nonetheless, this long-term vision clearly shapes the current goals of Blue Origin and the commercial space race as a whole.
Blue Origin and its biggest competitor in the commercial space industry, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are developing technologies that Bezos and Musk hope could, one day, guide people to new lives outside Earth.
“I won’t live to see the fruits of this, but the fruits of all this come from building a road to space and infrastructure,” Bezos told Fridman.
The challenges of keeping humans happy and healthy in space
There are many problems to solve before we can live on giant space stations and colonize the solar system. But to keep it simple, let’s start with the essentials: feeding and reproduction.
Researchers have grown a few crops on the International Space Station, including tomatoes and lettuce. Although these vegetables are grown under different conditions, they appear to be just as nutritious as those grown on Earth, according to research.
However, to achieve the scale of agricultural production needed for an O’Neill colony, “we need to develop these very safe, closed-loop, autonomous agricultural systems,” said Rebeca Gonçalves, an astrobiologist formerly at the European Space Agency whose Research focuses on how we could grow crops off-world, such as on Mars.
As for human reproduction in space, Adam Watkins, associate professor of reproductive biology at the University of Nottingham, said we have a long way to go.
“Giving birth in space, you just don’t want to consider the logistics and difficulties that might be associated with it, let alone if there are complications associated with it,” he said.
As far as we know, no one has ever had sex in space. And we’ve certainly never sent a pregnant person into space. The health risks are too high, Watkins said.
These risks hinder research that could reveal how space radiation affects fetal development. Scientists therefore do not know exactly what the impact would be.
To eliminate these risks, space colonies would need health systems just as equipped to handle reproduction as those on Earth, Watkins said.
“It’s one thing to get people into space, we can do it. It’s pretty simple.” Watkins said, adding that the hardest part is “building these entire infrastructure communities where you have these kinds of support structures in place, fully functional, tried and tested, I think that’s a long way off.”
Escaping Earth’s problems could be a ‘dangerous illusion’
Our industrialized presence on the planet is causing climate change, resource scarcity and a biodiversity crisis. Leaving Earth is a way for humanity to continue on its current path and preserve Earth, according to Bezos.
“We want to use a lot of energy. We want to use a lot of energy per capita. We’ve achieved incredible things. We don’t want to go back,” he told Fridman.
But Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal who advises the monarchy on astronomical matters, doesn’t think leaving Earth behind is the best solution. option, he told Business Insider.
Using space as “an escape from the problems we might cause to our own planet” is a “dangerous illusion,” he said. “We should take care of our own planet. It’s the best thing we have.”
Saving Earth would be much easier than building Bezos’ space colonies, he told BI.
Even if we never reach space colonies, the work of researchers studying extraterrestrial colonization could be useful to us here on Earth. For example, Gonçalves’ research on Martian agriculture could help improve the resilience of crops in our planet’s sandy and degraded soils, she said.
“I don’t think these O’Neill-type space colonies will be as attractive to spend your life there as living on Earth with its wonderful variety,” Rees said.