The drones weigh less than 55 pounds , will be equipped with ‘ sense and avoid ’ technology and operate beyond the line of sight for 10 miles or more . “ If it sees anything that makes it nervous , it can divert , or phone home for help and get a human to help it land ,” Bezos said .
But before drones can start dropping off your latest purchase , they need to be approved by regulatory agencies around the world , including the Federal Aviation Administration here in Washington . Bezos is confident it will happen and seeing Prime Air drones delivering goods will become as everyday as seeing mail trucks drive down the road .
Blue Origin announced that Cape Canaveral will serve as the launch and manufacturing site for its Orbital Launch Vehicle .
“ We ’ re getting really good cooperation from the British equivalent of the FAA , the CAA ,” Bezos said . “ It ’ s incredible . It ’ s really cool .”
BLASTING OFF INTO NEW VENTURES
Bezos isn ’ t just testing drones to help Amazon deliver packages . He ’ s also testing space flight to help the planet survive . “ I believe it ’ s incredibly important that we humans go out into space and the primary reason , if you think long term about this , is we need to do that to preserve the earth ,” he said .
It ’ s not about developing a contingency planet in case we muck this one up too badly and need a place to move . “ I ’ m not one of the Plan B guys ,” he said . Rather , Bezos believes we will need the resources and energy from other planets to support the one we ’ re on . “ You want a thriving , growing civilization . You want population growth to continue . You want a bunch of things to continue ,” he said . “ I believe that in the next few hundred years we will move all heavy industry into space for practical reasons — easier access to resources of all kinds , material resources as well as energy .”
New Glenn from Blue Origin is a reusable , verticallanding booster , with 3.85 million pounds of thrust .
Amazon ’ s first gateway page your package to you in half an hour or less by flying more than 50 miles per hour over a 20-mile range .
You buy a product , print off a special symbol , put it in the backyard and the drone will spot the symbol and deliver the brand-new item before you can make and finish a cup of tea . “ It ’ s going to work really well in one of the hardest neighborhoods — urban , dense suburban neighborhoods ,” Bezos said recently , fittingly , at the 2016 Pathfinder Awards at Seattle ’ s Museum of Flight . “ You just need a landing field . And if you have a landing field , you can mark it with a symbol which you can print out on your printer and put wherever you want the vehicle to land .”
Bezos is doing his part to get the ball rolling with Blue Origin , a company he started to develop and test reusable rocket-powered vehicles to take people — paying customers — into suborbital and orbital space . The company is staging a series of promising test flights from Texas . The New Shephard is a pressurized capsule and a booster that launches up into the air for a couple of minutes before the components separate , both eventually landing softly ( the booster with parachutes ) so they can be used again and again , making the technology affordable .
He may be flying customers to space as early as next year . “ I do believe that Blue Origin can be a sustainable , profitable enterprise one day ,” Bezos said . “ But it is an investment horizon that would make most reasonable investors sick to their stomachs .”
Bezos may not be a “ reasonable ” investor . His obsession with space travel started long before he became obsessed with customers . “ I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon ,” he said . “ I fell in love with the idea of space and space exploration and space travel when I was five years old . I was infected with this idea . I couldn ’ t ever stop thinking about space .”
The guy who started an online shopping empire in his garage is happily working on his childhood dream of space travel , spurring research and development that may well propel another industry into the mainstream . “ If I ’ m 80 years old looking back on my life and the one thing I have done is make it so that there is this gigantic entrepreneurial explosion in space for the next generation , I will be a happy , happy man .”
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