Jeff Bezos Interview

Exclusive Interview: Jeff Bezos On Space-Travel For The Regular Guy

Quick Bio

Sage advice can be gleaned indirectly from the words of men who've done amazing things. In this interview series by Jim Clash called "The Right Stuff" — and in Clash's books in the Right Stuff series — we share nuggets of wisdom from great men who've taken big risks in life — boxers, balloonists, test pilots, astronauts, mountain climbers, ocean divers, scientists, Olympians, race car drivers — and come out the better for it.

What exactly is the right stuff? Other than the name of a famous movie about the space race, it’s a state of mind. The term is a throwback to a time when character counted — when men routinely risked their lives not to get rich, bloviate or self-aggrandize, but for their country, science, exploration, and the joy of pure competition.

Clash, a fellow and director at The Explorers Club, is a seasoned adventurer himself. In reporting for Forbes and other publications over the last two decades, he has skied to the South Pole; driven the Bugatti Veyron at its top speed of 253 mph; flown in a MiG-25 at Mach 2.6 to the edge of space; visited the North Pole twice; and climbed the Matterhorn, 23,000-foot Aconcagua and virgin peaks in Antarctica and Greenland. He has also purchased a ticket from Virgin Galactic Airways to fly into suborbital space.

Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos is best known for pioneering the world of the web. He founded Amazon in 1994 in a Seattle garage and quickly built it into the internet’s biggest powerhouse. But like so many baby boomers, the 50-year-old, whose net worth is estimated by Bloomberg Businessweek to be around $28 billion, is now also a space fanatic. 

Blue Origin, another of his companies, is looking to compete with Space X, Virgin Galactic Airways and SXC Corp. for business in the private sector. It is working on a reusable vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle called New Shepard for suborbital human flight. Launches are planned from a western Texas facility and later will include orbital capability. 

Bezos says he wants to fly in space someday. Until then, he is mining the past. Last year, he organized a team led by diver David Concannon to search for and recover the old F-1 Saturn V rocket engines that powered the Apollo missions to the moon. The engines were jettisoned as part of NASA’s launch process four decades ago and have been sitting 14,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean ever since. 

The machines were mind-blowing. For context, they burned a rocket fuel mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene at the rate of three tons per second to accelerate crews into orbit at 17,500 miles per hour.

Bezos was with his team aboard the Seaboard Worker ocean vessel when they found parts of several Apollo engines last March. At the time, he did not know which exact missions were represented but was hopeful that one might be from Apollo 11, the first mission where men set foot on the moon in 1969.

After extensive artifact examination in the U.S. later, it was determined that indeed one of the engines — No. 5, Unit No. 2044 — was from Apollo 11. Bezos is planning to put the engines on display for public viewing at various places, including the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where the Apollo 11 Command Module resides.

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