Perspective
Jeff Bezos Dreams of a 1970s Future
If the sci-fi space cities of Bezos’s Blue Origin look familiar, it’s because they’re derived from the work of his college professor, the late physicist Gerard O’Neill.
One afternoon in Washington, D.C., a man delivered a high-stakes presentation about the future of humans in outer space. We would need to go and live there, he told his audience, because the expansion of human life beyond Earth was the only alternative to stagnation and stasis.
It was a turbulent time: Cultural change had seemed to slow down, and people were newly aware that resources on Earth were shrinking, while pollution and environmental destruction were growing. If our horizons didn’t expand, the man warned, they might end up limited forever.