Blue Origin was founded with a vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. Blue Origin envisions a time when people can tap into the limitless resources of space and enable the movement of damaging industries into space to preserve Earth, humanity’s blue origin. Blue Origin is working today to create that future by developing reusable launch vehicles and in-space systems that are safe, low cost, and serve the needs of all civil, commercial, and defence customers. Blue Origin’s efforts include flying astronauts to space on New Shepard, producing reusable liquid rocket engines, developing an orbital launch vehicle with New Glenn, building next-generation space habitats, and returning to the surface of the Moon in a permanent way. These endeavours will add new chapters to the history of spaceflight and move all of humanity closer to that founding vision.
A key part of this vision is the opening of space resources and their in-situ utilization. The Space Resources Program at Blue Origin has been established to address the challenges required for opening space resources to humanity and to use them in-situ, starting with the Moon, whilst simultaneously infusing technologies back on Earth to benefit humanity today. The Space Resources Program was ignited in 2020 and consists today of nearly seventy scientists and engineers across various disciplines from geophysics, planetary sciences, material sciences, chemistry, metallurgy, semiconductor sciences, and all engineering disciplines required to design, build, and maintain resource prospecting, processing, and manufacturing systems, on the Moon and on the ground.
In this talk, I will introduce Blue Origin and our Space Resources Program, our vision, and goals, and will dive into the technologies we are developing in our dedicated Space Resources Center of Excellence in Los Angeles, which range from prospecting for reserves on the Moon and learning how to transform sand and regolith into solar panels to revolutionizing how we mine and process critical metals carbon neutrally and environmentally friendly in a world that calls for profound climate actions.