Yesterday in an event presented by himself, the aerospace company Blue Origin’s owner Jeff Bezos revealed the project of a lunar lander capable of transporting up to 6,500 kg of cargo but also human beings to the Moon and to transport cargoes and astronauts from the Moon to the Earth called Blue Moon. The goal is to offer his help in the return of American astronauts to the Moon and subsequently to create there a permanent human presence.

Jeff Bezos is well known as Amazon’s founder and CEO but in 2000 he also opened the Blue Origin aerospace company which was initially focused on the development of the small New Shepard rocket for suborbital flights mainly for tourism and partly for scientific purposes and perhaps already within the year there will be the first manned launch. However, in recent years a number of announcements showed a remarkable expansion of Jeff Bezos’s ambitions with the announcement of the development of the BE-4 engine, which will also be used by ULA (United Launch Alliance) and above all of the New Glenn, a much bigger rocket to compete with the heavy launchers existing and announced for the next few years. In 2017 Jeff Bezos released the first statements that Blue Origin was working on a Moon lander and now its official presentation arrived.

The Blue Moon lander will use an engine called BE-7, currently under development, which will use liquid hydrogen as a propellant reacting with liquid oxygen. The development of the engine also exploits the experience of the BE-3, the New Shepard rocket’s engine that also uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Blue Moon shows similarities with the Apollo landers but is designed with all the most modern criteria. It will be equipped with fuel cells to work even on lunar nights and will be used to transport all that is needed for manned missions and to establish a permanent base on the Moon.

A few weeks ago, NASA’s new plans to bring astronauts back to the Moon were announced and a few days later Vice President Mike Pence stated that he wanted them to be implemented by 2024. Jeff Bezos offered Blue Origin’s collaboration and it will be really interesting to see what will happen. There’s strong controversy over the delays in developing NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System), with big budgetary issues. According to Blue Origin’s plans, the Blue Glenn rocket is scheduled to debut in 2021, however the Blue Moon lander should be able to be adapted for launches with ULA’s rockets, both the current Atlas V and the future Vulcan.

It’s not yet clear if there will really be a collaboration between Blue Origin and NASA but Jeff Bezos stated that he’s already in contact with companies and other entities that might be interested in sending cargoes to the Moon. He also opened “Club For the Future“, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring the next generation of dreamers but also space entrepreneurs.

There’s still a lot to see about the possible missions with the Blue Moon lander but in recent years Jeff Bezos has been investing a lot of money in Blue Origin: there are some works in collaboration with NASA and ULA but the funding has come mainly from Bezos’s personal assets with the sale of some Amazon shares. In the coming years, with NASA missions and Blue Origin plans without forgetting SpaceX, we’ll see interesting developments and the projects of nations other than the USA must also be kept in mind. In short, there could be a new race to the Moon.

Blue Origin published the recording of yesterday’s event on YouTube.