Google CEO Sundar Pichai breaks silence on former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos flying into space
On Monday, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that he was “jealous” of the Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for his July 20 space flight that would launch him, and his brother, Mark Bezos, into the edge of the space.
Bezos is expected to fly approximately 100 kilometres or 328,000 feet to the Kármán Line on New Shepard on the day that marks NASA’s Apollo moon landing anniversary.
Speaking about Bezos’ 11-minute trip to space, Google’s CEO Pichai told BBC in a televised interview, “Well, I’m jealous, a bit,” adding that he would love to look at Earth from space. He then went on to describe his views on AI, saying that it is the most profound technology that humanity has developed.
The 11-minute trip is the Amazon’s first scheduled space-tourism flight, set to blast the crew 62 miles above the Earth’s surface. Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, and he said in a 2018 interview that it was his “most important work.” Bidding for one of six seats on the ship reached almost $30 million, with nearly 6,000 participants from 143 countries.
In the interview, Pichai talked about a varied range of things. When asked when was the last time he cried, he said: “Seeing the morgue trucks parked around the world during COVID. And seeing what’s happened in India over the past month.”
Meanwhile, British billionaire Richard Branson on Sunday soared more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane and safely returned in the vehicle’s first fully crewed test flight to space, a symbolic milestone for a venture he started 17 years ago.
Sunday’s launch of the VSS Unity passenger rocket plane marked the company’s 22nd test flight of its SpaceShipTwo system, and its fourth crewed mission beyond Earth’s atmosphere. It was also the first to carry a full complement of space travelers – two pilots and four “mission specialists,” Branson among them.
Heralding a new space tourism era, Branson reached space with three employees, including one of Indian-origin, leaving Jeff Bezos to follow his route on July 20. Bezos has been planning to fly aboard his own suborbital rocketship, the New Shepard, later this month.