Jeff Bezos Wants to Move Polluting Industries to the Moon

JAKARTA - Jeff Bezos has launched a big idea that sounds like science fiction. The Amazon founder said that the industry that pollutes the environment should be moved to the Moon so that Earth remains habitable.

According to a report by The Independent, quoted on Sunday, June 21, Bezos expressed this view at the VivaTech conference in Paris, Wednesday. He called the Moon a "gift" that could help accelerate economic growth without continuing to burden the Earth.

Moon colonization, the idea of building permanent human settlements and economic activities on the Moon, is one of the main missions of Blue Origin, Bezos' private space company.

But this time, Bezos went further by proposing that polluting industries be moved off Earth.

"Our long-term vision, our dream, is that all of the industries that pollute can be done off-Earth," Bezos said.

According to one of the richest people in the world, the Earth can be returned to its pre-industrial revolution state if polluting industries are moved off the planet.

"This garden planet can be returned to the condition before the industrial revolution. This is the only thing that makes today's world worse than 500 years ago," he said.

Bezos called the data center for artificial intelligence or AI as one of the first industries that could be moved into space.

A similar idea was once delivered by the richest man on earth, Elon Musk. The space entrepreneur assessed that building AI infrastructure in outer space is "the only way" to scale up the technology.

The Independent also reported that Bezos disagreed with concerns that AI would make humans lose their jobs en masse. He actually predicted that AI could create a labor shortage because the demand for human workers increased.

"I know a lot of people worry, including smart people, that AI will make humans no longer needed and so on," Bezos said.

"I really disagree with that view. I actually think AI will create labor shortages," he said.

Blue Origin earlier this year revealed plans to place a data center in space. The company has submitted a proposal to US regulators to build a network of more than 50,000 satellites to support AI workloads.

Blue Origin has also won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA to develop launch vehicles and landers for the Artemis program. The program aims to return humans to the Moon's surface before the end of the decade.

Last month, NASA awarded Blue Origin another separate contract worth hundreds of millions of US dollars to send two rovers to the Moon. A rover is an explorer vehicle used to move and work on the Moon's surface.

However, the big ambition has not been smooth. Two days after the contract was awarded, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded during testing on the Cape Canaveral launch pad, Florida.

The multibillion-dollar facility needs major repairs before the next launch can be carried out. Even so, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp estimates that flights could resume before the end of this year.

Jeff Bezos. (Wikimedia Commons - Seattle City Council from Seattle)