Jun 11, 2021 9:00 AM

Jeff Bezos Risks It All for His Space Dream

Plus: The origins of Blue Origin, Apple's annoying error messages, and a Kardashian plot twist.

Jeff Bezos stands in front of Blue Origin rocket

Hi everyone. This week we learned how little billionaires pay in taxes and that they like to go to space. So how about a big hairy entry tax for those returning to Earth? Pay up or stay up!

The Plain View

Three years ago, I was interviewing a Seattle tech billionaire who owned a space company. I asked him if he had dreams of riding in one of his own rockets to sample weightlessness and gaze down upon his various real estate holdings on Earth. Are you going? I wanted to know.

He said no.

“There was a time I did,” said Paul Allen, owner of a company called Stratolaunch, which at the time had plans to send a variety of satellites and vehicles into space by launching them from a humongous airborne carrier. “But at this time of my life I’ve got so many responsibilities, and I know there’s risk involved.”

That was Allen’s last interview. He died several months later, at age 65. Stratolaunch has shifted its business plan to focus on launching hypersonic missiles. But this week another billionaire Seattle proprietor of a space company decided to swallow the risk, after first reducing his responsibilities. That is Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin over 20 years ago on the premise that the future of humanity lies in space colonies. One of the first steps toward the goal would be safe—if not very affordable—space tourism, to spread the idea that leaving Earth is a reasonable thing for humans to do. Plus, it would be fun.

When I spoke to Bezos about this, also in 2018, Blue Origin was supposedly getting close to sending people for a quick shot into space—an 11-minute joyride that would begin on a reusable rocket booster and end by parachuting down to the Texas desert only yards from the launch pad. The plan was to do a test flight with professional pilots in 2019 and then send up paying customers. (The rumored price was $250k.) Bezos himself would wait. “If I just wanted to go to space, I would buy a ticket from the Russians,” he told me then. “I’ve been offered many times, believe me.” Then came two separate announcements that shared a July 2021 target date: Bezos’ formal step-down from the CEO post at Amazon, and Blue Origin’s first flight with people on board. Suddenly everything made sense. And indeed, this week Jeff Bezos said that he would be part of Blue’s human payload on July 20, riding his New Shepard rocket past the theoretical borderline between Earth and outer space, roughly 60 miles up, known as the Karman Line.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule has six seats, each with a big picture window. So far, three spots are spoken for in this maiden voyage. Bezos has invited his brother Mark to occupy one (this Instagram post captures the moment in the style of The Bachelorette). A third will go to the winner of an online auction held this weekend: the pre-bidding is already approaching $4 million, and it will probably go much higher. (I nominate Beeple, who can pay for the trip and probably reap a big profit by creating an NFT while waiting on the launch pad.)

Though Bezos wants to dramatically bring down the cost of space flights with reusable parts, for the foreseeable future only the rich will be able to pay their way up and down. “Because of basic physics of what you do on a spaceflight, this is going to remain the realm of high-net-worth individuals,” says Tom Shelly, the president of Space Adventures—a company that has arrangements with the Russian space program and SpaceX to send super-wealthy civilians into orbit. There are enough takers to form waitlists. To Seattle-based software pioneer Charles Simonyi, the only two-time space tourist (he traveled with the Russians to the International Space Station in 2007 and 2009), the adventure was worth the cost. Since each trip cost “tens of millions of dollars,” that’s saying something. “I’m so happy that I was able to do the flight when it was still kind of this romantic idea,” he says. “Now, it's going to be more of a touristy thing.” He hastened to add that this is a wonderful development, with all those new quasi-astronauts sharing their experiences with those of us cooling our heels on the earthen crust.

But Simonyi, who survived a rough battle with Covid early in the pandemic, won’t be bidding for the open seat on New Shepard, at least not this time around. Once Blue Origin has an established track record, he says he might pay for three seats, giving his preteen daughters a glimpse of space travel. Such are the options of a Microsoft billionaire.

You can argue that no one has paid more to dip into space than Bezos, who has invested billions in Blue Origin. But his own thrill ride is just a side benefit of pursuing his ultimate goal: creating the infrastructure for humans to live in space. Since he was a teenager, he has been convinced that it is the destiny of the human species to reside in extraterrestrial colonies, but to get there, space travel must become routine. Blue Origin plans to hop from suborbital to orbital flights (a big hop), then to the moon and points beyond.

Still, one imagines he’s feeling good about being the first person to build his own rocket to take him to space. But that might not happen. Entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson, whose company Virgin Galactic has been planning for decades to launch customers into space from a carrier plane (à la Stratolaunch), has reportedly responded to Bezos’ announcement by speeding up his company’s vertical road map—so Branson himself can be a passenger, on a flight taking off during the July 4 weekend. (Virgin Galactic’s official statement says, “At this time, we have not determined the date of our next flight,” without addressing who might be on it.) Back in the ’60s, the stakes of the “space race” hinged on geopolitical and military supremacy. For Branson, it’s now apparently a matter of galactic bragging rights.

Meanwhile, we haven’t heard about Elon Musk’s plans to get on a spaceship. His company, SpaceX, has now sent astronauts to the International Space Station and, through Space Adventures, is taking reservations from civilians for a trip around the moon. But for all of Elon’s talk about going to Mars, he has yet to pop off-planet.

Bezos doesn’t want to wait. No matter what you think about him, or even if you sneer at the spectacle of the world’s richest man spending a fortune to forgo gravity for a few minutes, you have to concede his commitment. He’s putting it all on the line—the Karman Line. And if all goes well, he’ll be back in time for dinner.

Time Travel

In my 2018 WIRED article about Blue Origin, I described Bezos’ plans for space tourism—his prediction that it would begin in 2019 was overly optimistic—and what the customers would get for their money:

Bezos says that Blue will carry humans into space in the first half of 2019. Then it will launch its suborbital tourism business, perhaps before the year is out. Since the flight itself will be automated and designed for comfort, Bezos guesses that his customers will need only a day of training. They will be astronauts in the way that people who sign up with the Universal Life Church to perform marriages are clerics. Bezos anticipates that they’d sign a waiver—an FAA requirement—that would read like a form you’d sign for a scuba diving excursion. The six black seats, resembling souped-up barber chairs, are arranged in a circle, each with a view through giant windows. (No middle seats!) Computer displays will show footage of the takeoff, the booster and capsule separating, and other events. When the capsule crosses into space, the passengers will get about four minutes to unbuckle and float around inside. After that suborbital idyll, a recorded voice will instruct them to return to their seats…

The whole trip will last about 11 minutes, making it seem like a very expensive Disney ride. It almost makes you wonder why, when Blue’s long-term goals are so high-minded, it is pursuing a project so seemingly frivolous. Bezos’ response is that tourism is a source of revenue, but also something bigger—the best way to make space travel seem routine. If people you know (or at least have heard of) are popping into suborbital space, it will start to feel more normal and less risky. Commercial air travel also followed this path, with early passengers engaging in fervent prayer on the runway. Meanwhile, Blue will use the trips to perfect its rockets. “We wanted a mission that would fly a lot,” Bezos says. “Launching commercial satellites, you’re lucky if you do it a couple dozen times a year.” (Bezos himself hasn’t yet committed to a flight. “I’m going for sure,” he says. “I don’t have a time frame.”)

Ask Me One Thing

Mike asks, “Why can’t Apple clean up the obscure and unhelpful error messages in MacOS? What am I supposed to do when something doesn’t work, because (Error -36)? When I start poking around in Apple Forums for insights, sometimes there is knowledgeable help, but often a warren of possibilities and terminal commands I’d be crazy to try out on my problem.”

Thanks for writing, Mike. I don’t think Apple is alone with that problem. We live in a world where products are full of features—and glitches. I remember when computer devices and software programs came with thick manuals that not only helped you troubleshoot but also pointed you to cool features and shortcuts. Since our tools were so hard to use, these books were vital. Over the years, advances in design and interfaces allowed companies like Apple to release products where the most valuable features were fairly transparent, no manuals required. If you got into trouble, you’d try the help menu. But those help menus often fall short. Services like Apple Forums are sometimes useful, but they aren’t carefully curated. All too often I wind up using Google as my manual and trouble-shooter, typing my problem into the search bar. So how can we fix this? At one point Microsoft had the idea to create a cheerful bot in the form of a talking paper clip that would watch what you did and suggest remedies for the times you got stuck. But we hated Clippy! So I don’t see a solution, except maybe better dialog boxes that say more than Error-36.

You can submit questions to mail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.

End Times Chronicle

The Kardashians are leaving reality television. No more damage left to do?

Last but Not Least

How much of a risk is Bezos taking? Not as much as you might think. Yet … still a risk.

The fascinating and disturbing story behind the ouster of Google’s AI ethics expert.

The digital world of Roblox seemed so cool. Until the fascists came.

After George Floyd, venture capitalists promised more diversity. Are you shocked they didn’t deliver?

That's it for this week. You will notice I got through an entire essay about Jeff Bezos and space travel without a single joke about Amazon delivery. You’re welcome.

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