He believes that in 20 years millions of people will live there

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, does not stand still since the tycoon moved to Florida to be closer to their headquarters. Now Bezos has given an enlightening talk about how he sees the future of the space sector. The businessman believes that millions of people will voluntarily live in space in 20 years.

Don’t be sad. During a talk with John Elkann (president of Ferrari and Stellantis) at the Italian Tech Week TurinBezos did not mince his words. The tycoon said he did not understand how “someone who is alive right now can be discouraged” about the future.

The reason for your optimism? A near future where artificial intelligence, robotics and, above all, space exploration, converge in “multiple golden ages.” The future of humanity is not only on Earth; according to Jeff Bezos, it is about to expand exponentially through space.

The role of Blue Origin. “I think in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space; that’s how quickly this is going to accelerate,” said Bezos, who I had already confessed in the past his expectation that Blue Origin will end up being bigger than Amazon.

This optimism is not just rhetorical. Bezos is investing billions of his personal fortune each year to build new technologies for the commercial exploitation of space:

• New Glenn, Blue Origin’s heavy rocket successfully completed its first mission for NASA: launching the two probes of the ESCAPADE mission heading to Mars (the probes will set their final course for the red planet in November 2026). Blue Origin He also recovered the first stage of the rocket on the high seas, becoming the second private company in the world to achieve this. However, the year 2026 has been complicated: in May, the fourth New Glenn exploded on its only launch pad during a static power-up, destroying towers and key infrastructure. NASA estimates that the platform will not be repaired before 2028.
• Orbital Reef, the commercial space station in the form of a luxury hotel for millionaires that will have scientific modules for when the International Space Station is removed from orbit. The project overcame a series of habitability tests with real people within full-scale models of its modules, within the framework of NASA’s space station development program, which foresees that the first private platforms will replace the ISS in the second half of this decade.
• bluemoon, the lunar module with which Blue Origin It aims to surpass Starship by solving one of the big problems of the SpaceX ship: the evaporation of cryogenic propellants in space. NASA has assigned Blue Moon the mission Lunar Base Ischeduled for fall 2026, which will land at the lunar south pole. Blue Moon will also participate in the Artemis III mission (2027, in low Earth orbit) and in Artemis IV, the first manned lunar landing scheduled for early 2028. The explosion of the New Glenn complicates the launch schedules, although NASA is working to undock the lunar module from the rocket so as not to delay the mission.
• Other lunar developments, such as the ability to make solar cells from lunar regolith. Bezos was clear: “If you’re going to go to the Moon and stay on the Moon, you need to use the Moon’s resources.”

Exploit the Moon and space. One of Bezos’ goals is to turn the Moon into an industrial launch pad. “The Moon is a gift from the universe,” he said, noting that its low gravity makes it cost 30 times less energy to launch a kilogram of mass from the Moon than from Earth. In his vision, the Moon becomes a “rocket fuel depot” that will allow us to explore the rest of the solar system.

Bezos’ vision directly connects the space race with the other great revolution of the moment: artificial intelligence. AI is a technology with an enormous energy thirst, and its data centers are becoming a true “energy hole” on Earth. Bezos’ solution: get them off the planet. The proposal is build gigantic data centers of gigawatts in space. The advantages are obvious: “We have solar power there 24/7, and solar power there has no clouds, no rain, no weather.”

It’s not science fiction. In fact, Bezos predicts that this apparent science fiction will be economically viable very soon: “We will be able to surpass the cost of terrestrial data centers in space within the next two decades.” Space, he believes, will go from being a place for communications satellites to being the center of heavy industry and data infrastructure.

In the end, Bezos’ vision unifies all the revolutions underway. If AI and robotics will take over production, what is left for humans? According to him, the freedom to choose. Bezos doesn’t believe we need to live in space to survive. Robotics technology will be so advanced that “we will be able to send robots to do that job.” So why will those millions of people go? Bezos’ answer is simple: “The majority will live there because they want to.”

A version of this article was published in November 2025

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Images | Blue Origin