Monday, April 11, 2005

From One-Horse Town to Spaceport

Van Horn is a dusty speck in the west of Texas, but if Jeff Bezos has his way, one day it will become a spaceport.

Bezos founded amazon.com and has over $5 billion to play with. He has been rumoured to be linked to a space project named Blue Origin, but only now are details emerging on the programme's objectives - to 'facilitate an enduring human presence in space'.

Bezos has bought several hundred thousand acres of land around Van Horn, which will initially be a base for rocket testing facilities. Later he plans to support space tourism, but his dream is to become a centre for space travel and the colonisation of space.

Residents of Van Horn have seen people with big plans come and go, so they aren't raising their hopes just yet. But there are plenty of jokes about needing hotels for Martians and renaming the town Mos Eisley.

You can read related news articles here. And if you want to be part of the action, Blue Origin is "actively hiring".

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