Jeff Bezos presented Blue Origin’s lunar lander that will take humans to the moon by 2024. At the event, Bezos stated that it is “time to go back to the moon and this time stay.”
The lunar lander can carry up to 3.6 metric tons of cargo and Bezos doesn’t just want to take astronauts to the Moon but also take advantage of the untapped resources on the lunar surface. He explained that it “takes 24 times less energy to get it off the surface compared to the Earth … that is a huge lever.”
The Trump administration has the same plans as Bezos, who stated during the event that he believes Blue Origin will be able to make it a reality by 2024 using the Blue Moon lunar lander.
He also added that they can “help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago.” After repeated trips, they plan to build a lunar base. The lander will be able to deploy rovers to the moon’s surface and even shoot satellite to orbit the moon.
One of the rovers was also revealed during the event, and it was nearly as big as a golf cart. The event also included the reveal of a new rocket engine called BE-7.
Bezos does not want to rush the launch, adding that two issues that interfere with space missions are the launch costs and resources, which can both be reduced by using the ice water that was recently discovered on the Moon.
“Oh stop teasing, Jeff”
As a response to the event, Elon Musk wrote a rather cheeky Tweet, adding a winky emoji and altering the photo of the Blue Moon lunar lander. The SpaceX founder used his word-play and the photo of the Blue Moon lunar lander where Moon was replaced with another word. We’ll let you see it by yourself in the tweet below:
Oh stop teasing, Jeff ? pic.twitter.com/wuWPENcSE1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2019