Tag: Jeff Bezos

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Buff Bezos and robot dog kick off MARS fest

Jeff Bezos and robot dog
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos takes a stroll with a SpotMini robot dog. (Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Amazon’s invitation-only conference on machine learning, automation, robotics and space exploration, also known as MARS, has become an annual tradition marked by billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos’ high-tech high jinks.

Last year, Bezos kicked off the Palm Springs meet-up by taking the controls of a giant robot. Today, he showed up as “Buff Bezos,” accompanied by Boston Dynamics’ four-legged, anxiety-inducing SpotMini robot.

Our invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, but based on the tweetstream, the highlights so far include an Intel indoor drone formation fly-in, emceed by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich … a ping-pong-playing robot … a show-and-tell by Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, featuring his company’s 3-D-printed Rutherford rocket engine and Humanity Star disco-ball satellite … a sound-converting vest … and an inspirational talk by actor Michael J. Fox.

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America’s spy-satellite agency cheers Jeff Bezos

NRO's Sapp and Jeff Bezos
Betty Sapp, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, sits in on a chat with Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. (NRO via Twitter)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos paid a visit to the National Reconnaissance Office this week — which fits right in with his plan to participate in national security space missions through his Blue Origin space venture.

Based on the readout from the NRO, the nation’s spy-satellite agency is also interested in what Bezos had to say about technological innovation.

“We cheer every new entrant who’s brave enough to go into the space business,” NRO Director Betty Sapp said during the March 12 meet-up, according to the agency’s Facebook posting.

“You’re obviously an innovator — like few others in the United States — and a real leader in space,” Sapp told Bezos. “Someone who could not only change the way we do business, but you, among others, have helped make space cool again, and that really resonates with us.”

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Jeff Bezos shares 114-second rocket engine video

Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine is an essential part of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ vision of getting millions of people living and working in space, so he’s anxious to show it works.

But not anxious enough to cut corners. The video he shared today on Twitter and Instagram shows a work in progress: a test firing of the methane-fueled BE-4 at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas, with the power dialed down to 65 percent of maximum and the blast limited to 114 seconds.

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Kirk or Picard? Trek fan Jeff Bezos reveals his pick

Stewarts and Bezoses
Patrick Stewart and his wife, Sunny Ozell, stand beside MacKenzie and Jeff Bezos at the Oscars. (Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Kirk, Picard or Janeway?

That choice of Star Trek captains is a standard question on our Geek of the Weeklist, and now Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has let all of us know where he stands.

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Time to check in with Jeff Bezos’ 10,000 Year Clock

10,000 Year Clock
Workers install components of the 10,000 Year Clock in Texas. (Jeff Bezos via Instagram)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is highlighting the start of installation of the 10,000 Year Clock, a $42 million project that’s arguably as way-out as his Blue Origin space venture.

Today Bezos posted a time-lapse video to Twitter and Instagram showing workers setting up steampunk-style assemblies of gears and sprockets deep inside a mountain in West Texas.

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Get a dummy’s-eye view of Blue Origin rocket ride

Test dummy
An instrumented test dummy, nicknamed “Mannequin Skywalker,” sits next to one of the huge windows in the New Shepard crew capsule. (Blue Origin Photo)

What will people experience when they rocket to the edge of space on the New Shepard suborbital spaceship that’s currently being tested by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin venture?

An 11-minute video, recorded inside the crew capsule during this week’s test flight in West Texas, gives you a pretty good idea.

You can even watch the flight’s effect on a test subject — in this case, an instrumented crash-test dummy nicknamed “Mannequin Skywalker.” (For those who have been on another planet for the past 20 years, that name’s a tribute to Anakin Skywalker, a central character in the “Star Wars” saga.)

One of the big takeaways is that there’s no crash: At the end of the ride, the capsule drifts down to the ground and lands with what looks like a relatively gentle floof.

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Blue Origin’s rocket gives test dummy a ‘great ride’

Blue Origin booster
Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster touches down in Texas after a successful test. (Blue Origin Photo)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his space venture, Blue Origin, launched the latest version of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship today for the company’s first test flight in 14 months, with an instrumented test dummy seated aboard.

“He had a great ride,” Bezos said tonight in a tweet.

The uncrewed, straight-up, straight-down trip was conducted at Blue Origin’s testing ground in West Texas. The video that Bezos included with his tweet showed the New Shepard blasting off and rising above a wide-open spread of ranchland.

In addition to the dummy, which was nicknamed “Mannequin Skywalker,” the New Shepard crew capsule carried 12 commercial, research and educational payloads, Blue Origin said.

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Blue Origin gives notice for spaceship flight test

Image: Jeff Bezos
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin venture is getting ready for launch. (Blue Origin Photo)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has alerted the Federal Aviation Administration that it’s planning to put a brand-new New Shepard rocket ship through an uncrewed flight test at its West Texas spaceport this week.

The FAA passed along word of the impending test in what’s known as a “Notice to Airmen,” or NOTAM.

The notice alerts aviators to stay away from the testing ground, on Bezos’ ranchland north of Van Horn, Texas, between 6:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. PT daily starting Dec. 11 and ending Dec. 14.

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Jeff Bezos on life, liberty and the pursuit of space

Image: Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin's New Shepard craft
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (in hat and sunglasses) pops open a bottle of champagne after Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket landing in November 2015. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ vision for his Blue Origin rocket venture is to have millions of people living and working in space — but why?

During this month’s Summit Series invitation-only event in Los Angeles, Bezos explained that it’s not just because he’s a Star Trek fan — although he is that indeed. He sees going beyond Earth as a critical step toward preserving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on our home planet.

That’s not even considering fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s view that Mars and other planets would serve as a Plan B for humanity in the event of an Earth-killing catastrophe.

“I hate the ‘Plan B’ argument,” Bezos said during a fireside chat that featured his brother Mark as emcee.

Instead, Bezos extrapolates from current trends in population growth and energy use, just as British physicist Stephen Hawking did this month. If the lines on the chart creep up by just a few percent per year, eventually “you’d have to cover the entire Earth’s surface in solar cells,” he said.

“That’s not going to happen,” he continued. “So, we have two choices: We either go out into space, or we switch over to a civilization of stasis. Personally, I do not like the idea of stasis.”

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Success! Blue Origin fires up BE-4 rocket engine

BE-4 engine firing
Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine blasts through its initial hot-fire test. (Blue Origin Photo)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it has successfully test-fired its BE-4 rocket engine, marking a key step in the development of its own New Glenn rocket as well as United Launch Alliance’s next-generation rocket.

Billions of dollars are at stake in the BE-4 project, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno told GeekWire last year.

ULA has been waiting for months to get good news about the BE-4 tests in West Texas. The company wanted to see a successful full-scale test before going ahead with plans to use the BE-4 engine on its Vulcan rocket, which is due to have its first flight in 2019.

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