Today at an intimate event in Washington, DC, Jeff Bezos took the wraps off some grand space plans. But that future, which includes trips to the lunar surface, isn’t much without the gear to get it there. Among the more impressive unveils was Blue Moon, a new lunar lander. Bezos unveiled the vehicle, which was hidden behind a curtain for much of the event. “This is an incredible vehicle,” he told the crowd, “and it’s going to the Moon.” Powered by liquid hydrogen, the lander has an on-board system capable of navigating in space. It also utilizes gigabit internet to communicate back to Earth using a laser. Micro-satellites can also be strapped to the top of the rover and deployed in lunar orbit. Blue Moon features an on-board lidar system capable of mapping lunar terrain, in order to choose the right landing site. According to Bezos, the system uses existing maps of the Moon’s surface to determine where to navigate relative to known landmarks. The vehicle features landing gear that’s stowed in an upward configuration and capable of landing on inclines up to 15 degrees. It’s capable of transporting 3.6-6.5 metric tons of payload, which includes humans and a rover, also unveiled onstage. Bezos didn’t offer much in the way of specifics on the latter at the event, instead using the opportunity to lay out long-range plans for helping future generations deal with resource scarcities on Earth brought on by a rapidly increasing human population. As noted earlier, Bezos’s big unveil comes as the White House is making an aggressive push to kickstart a return to space travel. [gallery ids="1825196,1825170,1825165,1825164,1825159,1825158,1825148,1825149"] Vice President Mike Pence recently discussed hopes for returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, and President Trump has made several public statements about hopes for a landing on Mars during his presidency. While the administration will look at NASA first, they no doubt will also consider private space companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX to help achieve their goals through contracted work. Perhaps a joint appreciation of space travel will be enough for Trump and Bezos to at least temporarily put away longstanding differences — though that might be the biggest moonshot of all. Bezos offered up a 2024 time frame for the lander, which handily dovetails with Pence’s stated goals.<doc-sep>A little less than half a century ago, a pair of NASA astronauts packed up their geological samples after three days of roving and returned to Earth in the Apollo 17 lunar module. It was the last time that a human walked on the moon. Now the world’s wealthiest man, Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, and the other company he founded, Blue Origin LLC, want to chart the next chapter in humanity’s exploration of its tiny orbiting sibling. At a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday afternoon, Bezos made his case for going back to the moon and showed off his private space company’s lunar lander. “It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay,” Bezos said. On stage at the event, Bezos dropped the curtain behind him to reveal Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. The craft features a large internal spherical fuel tank and sits atop four landing pads. It’s powered by liquid hydrogen, in part so it can be refuel from ice water on the moon’s poles. Hydrogen fuel cells will power the device through the lunar night. “This is an incredible vehicle,” Bezos said, “and it’s going to the moon.” Bezos also showed off a new BE-7 engine, a high-performance liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine that powers the lander’s six minute descent. After it lands, Blue Moon will deploy a small rover. Bezos also displayed a photo of a version of the lander that can accommodate astronauts, and said he hopes missions can commence by 2024. Blue Origin has been working on Blue Moon since at least 2017. Last October, the company signed an agreement with NASA to develop medium to large commercial lander systems for the lunar surface. In exchange for $50,000 payment from Blue, NASA agreed to share technical analysis and information on potential lunar landing sites. In a March speech, Vice President Mike Pence called for a return to the moon by 2024 and said the Trump administration had directed NASA to “accomplish this goal by any means necessary.” Bezos has been at odds with President Donald Trump over a number of issues related to Amazon. But he said of the Trump administration’s timetable to return to the moon: “I love this. It’s the right thing to do.” The moon has always been central to Bezos’s space-faring dreams, as well as the vision of his former professor, the late Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill. O’Neill, an iconoclast who passed away in 1992, envisioned a future with millions of humans living in space inside giant orbiting space cylinders, growing crops and harnessing the energy of the sun. The physicist theorized that the moon, a repository of raw materials and free of the atmosphere and punitive gravitational forces of the Earth, could be the staging ground to construct and economically launch such habitats. This focus on the moon as the most effective way to start colonizing space sets Bezos apart from fellow space-faring tech billionaire Elon Musk, who sees colonizing Mars as humanity’s best “Plan B.” Bezos dubbed that kind of thinking to “planet chauvinism.” His pitch for a lunar landing even included a jab at those prefer to aim for Mars. “Round-trip on the order of years,” read one slide with an image of the red planet. “No real-time communication.” Blue Origin’s mascot is a tortoise, and true to form, the company’s progress has been notoriously slower than at Musk’s SpaceX. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets have completed over 70 missions, sending satellites into orbit and ferrying supplies to the International Space Station. Blue’s two-stage orbital rocket, dubbed New Glenn, isn’t scheduled for launch until 2021. It’s first stage, Bezos said, is designed to be reused 25 times. A much smaller, reusable rocket, New Shepard, is designed to take six paying tourists to the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness. Those missions, Bezos said, are due to start later this year. Blue Origin invited a few dozen kids, who Bezos said were inaugural members of a new “Club for the Future,” meant to “inspire young people to build the future of life in space.” “The kids here and their kids and grandchildren will build these colonies. My generation’s job is to build the infrastructure so they will be able to. We are going to build a road to space,” Bezos told the audience. “And then amazing things will happen. Then you’ll see entrepreneurial creativity. Then you’ll see space entrepreneurs start companies in their dorm rooms. That can’t happen today.” Now read: Why we never see the far side of the Moon<doc-sep>Jeff Bezos is set to take humans to the moon. At an event in Washington on Thursday, Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin unveiled Blue Moon, a lunar lander that can deliver large payloads to the moon. SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos challenges Amazon competitors to meet or exceed its new minimum wage According to Blue Origin, Blue Moon can land multiple metric tons of payload on the lunar surface, including infrastructure payloads that could be used to prepare for future missions. It can land anywhere on the moon, and has enough power for long missions. A larger variant of the lander, currently in development, can land an ascent vehicle which will allow the company to send humans to the moon and bring them back by 2024. The year 2024 coincides with the U.S. government's goal to bring astronauts to the moon. NASA still hasn't publicly announced a detailed plan on how to do that, and Bezos' announcement may be a path to a partnership. We'll likely see Blue Moon in action before that date; Bezos said the company would test it with an uncrewed mission before sending humans to the moon. Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company also plans to take humans to the moon (though without landing) and, eventually, Mars, said on Twitter that "competition is good" but also took the opportunity to crack a joke at Blue Moon's branding. But putting the word “Blue” on a ball is questionable branding — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2019 Blue Origin is not the only private company to develop a lunar lander. Last month, Lockheed Martin announced plans to build a lunar lander of its own, also within the 2024 time frame.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON — Yesterday, Blue Origin's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealed the company's plans to land a spacecraft named "Blue Moon" on the lunar surface. During an exclusive presentation here at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center yesterday (May 9), Bezos laid out the details of Blue Moon and all the ways it can be used to explore Earth's natural satellite. From new tech to possible crewed missions to the lunar surface, there's a lot to unpack from Bezos' presentation. We'll explain what Blue Origin plans to do with Blue Moon, as well as detail the spacecraft's design and some of its bells and whistles. Related: Blue Origin's Lunar Lander: A Photo Tour Jeff Bezos reveals the Blue Moon lunar lander for the first time on May 9, 2019. (Image credit: Blue Origin) Blue Moon is a relatively large lunar lander that's designed to deliver science payloads, moon rovers and even astronauts to the lunar surface. It can also deploy small satellites into lunar orbit as a "bonus mission" on the way, Bezos said. Blue Moon bears some resemblance to NASA's old Apollo lunar modules, but there are some noticeable differences. The most obvious, aside from its sleeker design, is the enormous, spherical fuel tank with the words "Blue Moon" printed in big, blue letters on its side. It also has much smaller landing pads, or "feet," on the bottom of its landing legs. That's because the Apollo landers' engineers were worried that the lunar soil would be so soft that the lander would sink too far, but the ground was more solid than they thought, Bezos said. Whereas the Apollo landers were designed specifically for human missions to the lunar surface — and, therefore, required human hands to deploy science payloads — Blue Moon is a fully autonomous, robotic spacecraft with built-in mechanisms for dropping off science gear, including lunar rovers. Using a crane-like contraption known as a davit system, the lander will gently lower payloads from its main deck to the lunar surface. The davit system can be customized for different types of payloads, and it can drop up to four large rovers onto the moon simultaneously. Other bells and whistles include a star tracker system and a flash lidar device that will allow the spacecraft to navigate autonomously by looking at stars in space and features on the lunar surface. "There's no GPS on the moon," Bezos said. "Now that we have mapped the entire moon in great detail, we can use those preexisting maps to tell the system what it should be looking for in terms of craters and other features, and it navigates relative to that. It uses the actual terrain of the moon as guideposts." With that navigation system, Blue Moon will be able to touch down within 75 feet (23 meters) of its target landing site, Bezos said. Hydrogen power The lander will utilize Blue Origin's new BE-7 engines, which the company will begin testing this summer, Bezos said. Those new engines will be powered by a combination of liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX), which is "not how Apollo did it," Bezos said. Although Apollo's command modules — which stayed in orbit while the lunar modules went to the surface — did use LH2/LOX for fuel, the landers used hypergolic propellant and ran on battery power. "We know a lot now about the moon that we didn't know back in the Apollo days or even really just 20 years ago," Bezos said. "One of the most important things we know about the moon today is that there's water there . It's in the form of ice. It's in the permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon, and water is an incredibly valuable resource. You can use electrolysis to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you have propellants." So, the LH2/LOX-powered engines not only provide better performance but also run on natural resources found on the moon — that is, if scientists find a way to mine the hydrogen from the moon's water ice . But Bezos seemed confident in the feasibility of that plan. "Ultimately, we're going to be able to get hydrogen from that water on the moon and be able to refuel these vehicles on the surface of the moon," he said. The spacecraft Blue Moon has a 23-foot (7 meters) payload bay that will stand about 14 feet (4 m) with its four landing legs fully deployed. When it's fully loaded with fuel, the lander weighs about 16.5 tons (15 metric tons). By the time it reaches the lunar surface, having burned up almost all of its fuel, the lander will weigh only about 3.3 tons (3 metric tons). For comparison, the Apollo lunar modules that carried astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s were 23 feet tall and weighed 4.7 tons (4.3 metric tons) without propellant. Lockheed Martin's proposed lunar lander is a bit bigger and heavier. That lander, which would also use LH2 and LOX for propellant and has yet to receive a name, would be about 46 feet (14 m) tall. Even with an empty fuel tank, the lander would weigh 24 tons (22 metric tons) — more than seven times the dry weight of Blue Moon. When the Lockheed Martin lander's fuel tank is filled, the module will weigh a whopping 68 tons (62 metric tons). Blue Moon may look smaller than Lockheed's lander, but it will have a bigger payload capacity. It will be able to deliver about 4 tons' (3.6 metric tons) worth of payloads to the lunar surface, compared with 1.1 tons (1 metric ton) for Lockheed's lander. A "stretched tank" variant of Blue Moon will be able to carry up to 7.2 tons (6.5 metric tons), including an added ascent stage — and some additional fuel — that would allow astronauts to visit the surface of the moon. A lander for astronauts? Blue Moon's "stretched tank" variant is topped a pressurized ascent module for astronauts. (Image credit: Blue Origin)<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON — Blue Origin is shooting for the moon! The private spaceflight company revealed the first life-size mockup of its new lunar lander, named "Blue Moon," here at the Washington Convention Center today (May 9). "This is an incredible vehicle, and it’s going to the moon," Blue Origin founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos told a room full of spectators after the curtain dropped to reveal the big, shiny spacecraft. Blue Moon is designed to carry rovers and other large payloads to the lunar surface, but it could also take astronauts to the moon, said Bezos, who also founded Amazon.com and is the richest person in the world. To modify Blue Moon for a crewed spaceflight, the company would top the spacecraft with an attachable, pressurized ascent vehicle. Before launching astronauts to the moon, Blue Origin would first test out the lunar lander with an uncrewed mission, Bezos said. While Bezos did not explicitly state that Blue Origin plans to offer its new vehicle to NASA for the agency's ambitious push to land American astronauts on the moon in 2024, a newly posted description on the company's website states that the crew-carrying variant of Blue Moon "has been designed to land an ascent vehicle that will allow us to return Americans to the moon by 2024." (Blue Origin representatives had mentioned Blue Moon before, but they hadn't given us a good look until today.) Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Blue Origin) NASA has not yet selected a lander for that historic trip, so Blue Moon may be a contender. Just last month, Lockheed Martin revealed its proposed plans to build a lunar lander. Lockheed's lander (which has yet to receive a proper name) would be part of the company's "early Gateway" infrastructure for a sustainable human presence on the moon. Whether NASA astronauts can really make it to the moon by 2024 is still a subject of debate, but a few things are certain: private companies and other space agencies around the world are gearing up for a new wave of lunar exploration, and Blue Origin has entered the new moon race.