An interesting interview. It’s mostly about Amazon’s business model and plans, but Blue Origin does come up:

Levy: You have a separate company called Blue Origin that hopes to send customers into outer space. Why is that important to you?

Bezos: It is a serious effort. When I was 5 years old, I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. It made me passionate about science, physics, math, exploration.

Levy: Will you walk on the moon someday?

Bezos: Me? Are you saying would I if I could?

Levy: I bet you’d like to, but do you think you will?

Bezos: Boy. I’ve been asked to make tough predictions before. That one’s very tough. But that’s not what this is about. If I wanted to buy tourist trips to fly to the International Space Station and Soyuz and those things, there’s nothing wrong with that. But that’s $35 million. I want to lower the cost of access to space.

Levy: How do you do that?

Bezos: I like to say, “Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.” For Amazon, that’s selection, speed of delivery, lower prices. Well, for Blue Origin it’s cost and safety. If you really want to make it so that anybody can go into space, you have to increase the safety and decrease the cost. That’s Blue Origin’s mission. I’m super passionate about it.

Levy: Do you feel that it’s a bit disconnected to start a space-exploration company in this economically grim time?

Bezos: No. We employ a lot of aerospace engineers. They have families, their kids go to college. We buy a lot of materials. Somebody made those materials, right?

I don’t even understand that last question, but note the use of the e-word. I wish we could get people to think about space in terms other than science and exploration.

[Late morning update]

This is sort of related. Lileks isn’t impressed with the Kindle Fire.