The future of space is going to involve a lot of robots, a lot of mining other planets for resources, and a lot of space stations made from those resources.
Bezos is planning for a future where all polluting industry is moved to outer space instead of being done here on Earth. He has publicly stated this on multiple occasions recently.
Highly doubtful …
> He has publicly stated this on multiple occasions recently.
He can say whatever he likes. I still don't trust that he cares about anything beyond amassing personal control of more money/resources.
And I don't think 50-70 miles is going to be the norm. This is more of a "test" flight, which is pretty normal. Everything has to start somewhere with a baby step.
It is going to be for the foreseeable future, and I'll tell you two reasons why:
1. FAA and USAF considers everyone that's been above 50 miles (~62 kilometres) as an astronaut.
2. Von Karman line (at 100 kilometres, or 62 miles) is the closest we have to the consensus over what constitutes "space".
We could've drawn it pretty much everywhere because Earth's atmosphere disappears gradually, but these are nice round numbers previously agreed upon.
Therefore, if you're after commercial space flights (like Bezos and Branson are), that's the minimum you need to do to be able to charge millions for a "space flight". There is no incentive to go above that for commercial purposes.
I had similar views until 5 years ago and questioned almost every new investment/endeavour by people that required significant upfront capital investment but I think this letter has changed a lot of my thinking process.