Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin | Lex Fridman Podcast #405

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. This is his first time doing a conversation of this kind and of this length. And as he told me, it felt like we could've easily talked for many more hours, and I'm sure we will. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. And now, dear friends, here's Jeff Bezos.

Lex Fridman 0:24 You spent a lot of your childhood with your grandfather on a ranch here in Texas.

Jeff Bezos 0:29 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 0:30 And I heard you had a, a lot of work to do around the ranch. So what's the coolest job you remember doing there?

Jeff Bezos 0:35 Wow. Coolest? Um...

Lex Fridman 0:37 Most interesting.

Jeff Bezos 0:37 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 0:38 Most memorable.

Jeff Bezos 0:39 Most memorable.

Lex Fridman 0:39 Most impactful.

Jeff Bezos 0:40 I mean, it was a, it was real, it's a real working ranch. Um, my gran... And I, I spent all my summers on that ranch from age four to 16. And my grandfather was really taking me those, in the summers. In the, in the early summers, he was letting me pretend to help on the ranch 'cause of course a four-year-old is a burden, not a help in real life. He'd been really just watching me and taking care of me. Um, uh, and he was doing that because my mom was so young. She had me when she was 17. And so he was sort of giving her a break. And my grandmother and my grandfather would take me for these summers. But as I got a little older, I actually was helpful on the ranch and I loved it. I was out there, like, my grandfather had a huge influence on me, huge factor in my life, and I did all the jobs you would do on a ranch. I've fixed windmills and laid fences and pipelines and, you know, done all the things that any rancher would do. Vaccinated the animals, everything. Um, uh, but we had a, you know, my grandfather... After my grandmother died, um, I was about 12, and I kept coming to the ranch. So it was, then it was just him and me, just the two of us. And he was completely addicted to the soap opera The Days of Our Lives.

Lex Fridman 1:57 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:57 And we would go back to the ranch house every day around 1:00 PM or so to watch Days of Our Lives. Uh, like sands through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 2:07 Just the image of that, the two of you sitting there-

Jeff Bezos 2:10 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 2:10 ... watching a soap opera-

Jeff Bezos 2:12 He had these-

Lex Fridman 2:13 ... two ranchers.

Jeff Bezos 2:13 ... big, crazy dogs. It was really a very formative experience for me. But the key thing about it, for me, the thi- the great gift I got from it was that my grandfather was so resourceful, you know. He did everything himself. He made his own veterinary tools. He would make needles to suture the cattle up with. Like, he would find a little piece of wire and heat it up and pound it thin and drill a hole in it and sharpen it. So, you know, you learn different things, um, on a ranch than you would learn, you know, growing up in a city.

Lex Fridman 2:43 So self-reliance.

Jeff Bezos 2:44 Yeah. Like, figuring out that you can solve problems with enough persistence and ingenuity and... My grandfather bought a D6 bulldozer, which is a big bulldozer, and he got it for, like, $5,000 'cause it was completely broken down. It was like a 1955 Caterpillar D6 bulldozer. New, it would've cost, I don't know, more than $100,000. And we spent an entire summer fixing, like repairing that bulldozer. We'd, y- you know, use mail order to, uh, to buy big gears for the transmission, and they'd show up and they'd be too heavy to move, so we'd have to build a crane. You know, just that kind of, kind of that problem-solving mentality. Um, he had it so powerfully, you know. He, he did all of his own, uh... He'd just, he didn't, he didn't pick up the phone and call somebody. He would figure it out on his own. He... Doing his own veterinary work, you know?

Lex Fridman 3:39 But just the image of the two of you fixing a D6 bulldozer and then going in for a little break at 1:00 PM-

Jeff Bezos 3:45 Watching...

Lex Fridman 3:46 (laughs) ... to watch soap operas.

Jeff Bezos 3:47 Watching Days of Our Lives. Laying on the floor. That's how he watched TV.

Lex Fridman 3:50 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 3:50 He was a really, really remarkable guy.

Lex Fridman 3:52 That's how I imagine Clint Eastwood also.

Jeff Bezos 3:54 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:55 In all those Westerns, when he's (laughs) , when he's not doing what he's doing, he's just watching soap operas. All right.

Lex Fridman 4:02 Uh, I read that you fell in love with the idea of space and space exploration when you were five-

Jeff Bezos 4:07 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 4:07 ... while watching Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. So let me, uh, ask you to look back at the historical context and impact of that. So the space race from 1957 to 1969 between the Soviet Union and the US was, in many ways, epic. It was, um, a rapid sequence of dramatic events. First satellite to space, first human to space, first space walk, first uncrewed landing on the moon. Then some failures, explosions, deaths on both sides actually. And then the first human walking on the moon. Uh, what are some of the more inspiring moments or insights you take away from that time, those few years, that just, uh, 12 years?

Jeff Bezos 4:51 Well, I mean, there's so much inspiring there. Um, you know, one of the great things to take away from that, one of the great von Braun quotes is, "I have, uh, I have come to use the word impossible with great caution." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 5:05 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 5:07 And so, uh, that's kind of the big story of Apollo is that things... You know, the, uh, going to the moon was literally an analogy that people used for something that's impossible. You know, "Oh yeah, you'll do that when, when, you know, men walk on the moon."

Lex Fridman 5:22 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 5:23 And of course it finally happened. Um, so, you know, I think it was pulled forward in time because of the space race. I think, you know, with the geopolitical implications and, you know, how much resource was put into it. You know, at the peak that program was spending, you know, 2 or 3% of GDP, uh, on the Apollo program. So much resource that I think it was pulled forward in time. You know, we kind of did it ahead of when we "should have done it."

Lex Fridman 5:52 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 5:53 Um, and so in that way it's also a technical marvel. I mean, it's truly incredible. It's, uh, you know, it's the 20th century version of...... building the pyramids or something. It's, you know, it's an achievement that, um, because it was pulled forward in time, and because it did something that had previously been thought impossible, it rightly deserves its place as, you know, in the pantheon of great human achievements.

Lex Fridman 6:17 And of course, you named, uh, the projects, the rockets that Blue Origin is working on after some of the folks involved.

Jeff Bezos 6:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:24 I don't understand why it didn't say New Gagarin. I, is that, is that-

Jeff Bezos 6:27 There's an American bias in the naming.

Lex Fridman 6:29 Oh, okay.

Jeff Bezos 6:29 I apologize, uh (laughs) Lex.

Lex Fridman 6:30 This is very strange. Just asking for friend, clarify.

Jeff Bezos 6:33 I'm a big fan of Gagarin's though. In fact, I, um, I think his, his first words in space, um, I think are incredible. He, uh, you know, he purportedly said, "My God, it's blue." And y- that really drives home, no one had seen the earth from space. No one knew that we were on this blue planet.

Lex Fridman 6:55 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 6:55 No one knew what it looked like from out there, and Gagarin was the first person to see it.

Lex Fridman 7:01 One of the things I think about is how dangerous those early days were for Gagarin, for, for Glenn, for everybody involved, like, how, how big of a risk they were all taking.

Jeff Bezos 7:10 They were taking huge risks. I'm not sure what the, uh, Soviets thought about Gagarin's flight. But I think that the Americans thought that the Alan Shepard flight, the flight that, you know, New Shepard is named after, the first American in space, he'd gone on his suborbital flight, they thought he had about a 75% chance of success.

Lex Fridman 7:30 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 7:31 Um, so, you know, that's a pretty big risk, a 25% risk.

Lex Fridman 7:36 It's, it's kinda interesting that Alan Shepard is not quite as famous as John Glenn. So for people who don't know, Alan Shepard is the first, uh, astronaut.

Jeff Bezos 7:44 The first American in space.

Lex Fridman 7:46 American in suborbital flight.

Jeff Bezos 7:48 Correct.

Lex Fridman 7:48 And, and then the first orbital flight is John Glenn.

Jeff Bezos 7:51 And then John Glenn is the first American to orbit the earth. By the way, I have the most charming, sweet, incredible letter from John Glenn, which I have framed and hang on my office wall-

Lex Fridman 8:04 What does it say?

Jeff Bezos 8:04 ... where he tells me how, uh, grateful he is that we have named New Glenn after him, and he sent me that letter about a week before he died. Um, and it's really an incredible ... It's also a very funny letter. He's, he's writing and he says, you know, "This is, uh, a letter about New Glenn from the original Glenn." And he's just, he's got-

Lex Fridman 8:25 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 8:25 ... a great sense of humor, and he's very, he's very, um, happy about it and grateful. It's very sweet.

Lex Fridman 8:30 Does he say, "PS don't mess this up," or is that

Jeff Bezos 8:33 (laughs) No, he doesn't.

Lex Fridman 8:35 Make me look good.

Jeff Bezos 8:35 He doesn't do that.

Lex Fridman 8:36 (laughs) Oh, okay, all right.

Jeff Bezos 8:37 But, but we, but John, wherever you are, we got you covered.

Lex Fridman 8:39 All right, good. Uh, so, so back to maybe the big picture of space. When you look up at the stars, uh, and think big, what do you hope is the future of humanity hundreds, thousands of years from now out in space?

Jeff Bezos 8:54 I would love to see, you know, a, a, you know, a, a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins, um, that would ... You know, our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy, um, and we can easily support a civilization that large with all of the resources, um, in the solar system.

Lex Fridman 9:21 So w- what do you think that looks like? Giant space stations?

Jeff Bezos 9:24 Yeah. The only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations. You know, the planetary surfaces are just way too small. Um, so you can, I mean, unless you turn them into giant space stations (laughs) or something. But, but yeah, we will take materials from the moon and from near-Earth objects and from the asteroid belt and so on, and we'll build, uh, giant O'Neill-style colonies, um, and people will live in those. And they have a lot of advantages over planetary surfaces. You can spin them to get normal Earth gravity. You can put them where you want them. I think most people are gonna wanna live, uh, near Earth, not necessarily in Earth orbit, but in, you know, uh, Earth, b- but near Earth vicinity, uh, orbits. Uh, and so they can move qui- you know, relatively quickly, uh, back and forth between their station and Earth. So but I don't th- I think a lot of people, especially in the early stages, are not gonna wanna give up Earth altogether.

Lex Fridman 10:24 They, they go to Earth for vacation.

Jeff Bezos 10:26 Yeah. Same way that, you know, you might go to, to Yellowstone National Park for vacation. People will, uh ... And the adv- and no one ... And people get to choose whether they live on Earth or whether they live in space, but they'll be able to use much more energy and much more material resource in space than they would be able to use on Earth.

Lex Fridman 10:45 One of the interesting ideas you had is, uh, to move the heavy industry away from Earth. So people sometimes have this idea that somehow space exploration, uh, is in conflict with the celebration of the planet Earth, that we should focus on preserving Earth, and, and basically your idea is that space travel and space exploration is a way to preserve Earth.

Jeff Bezos 11:06 Exactly. This planet, we've sent robotic probes to all the planets. We know that this is the good one. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 11:16 Yeah. Not to play favorites or anything, but-

Jeff Bezos 11:18 It's the, but Earth really is the good planet. It's an ama-, it's, it's amazing. The ecosystem we have here, all of the life and the lush, uh, the plant life and, you know, the water resources, everything, this planet is really extraordinary. And of course, we evolved on this planet, so of course it's perfect for us, but it's also perfect for all of the advanced life forms on this planet, all the animals and so on. And so this is a gem. We do need to take care of it. And as we enter the Anthropocene, as we get, as we humans have gotten so, uh, sophisticated and large and impactful as we stride across this planet, you know, it's t- that is gonna ... As, as we continue, we want to use a lot of energy. We want to use a lot of energy per capita. We've gotten amazing things. We, we don't wanna go backwards. You know, if you think about, um-... the good old days, they're mostly an illusion. Like, in almost every way, life is better for almost everyone today than it was, say, 50 years ago or 100 years a- we all- we live better lives, by and large, than our grandparents did, and their grandparents did, and so on. And you can see that in global illiteracy rates, global poverty rates, global infant mortality rates. Like almost any metric you choose, we're better off than we used to be. And we get, you know, antibiotics and all kinds of lifesaving medical care, and so on and so on. And there's one thing that is moving backwards, and it's the natural world. So, it is a fact that 500 years ago, pre-industrial age, the natural world was pristine. Um, it was incredible. And we have traded some of that pristine beauty for all these other gifts that we have as an advanced society. And we can have both, but to do that, we have to go to space. And all of this really, the most fundamental measure is energy usage per capita. And when you look at, you know, you do want to continue to use more and more energy. It is going to make your life better in so many ways. But that's not compatible, ultimately, with living on a finite planet. And so we have to go out into the solar system. Uh, and, and really, you could argue about when you have to do that, but you can't credibly argue about whether you have to do that.

Lex Fridman 13:49 Eventually, we have to do that.

Jeff Bezos 13:51 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 13:52 Well, you don't often talk about it, but let me ask you on that topic about the Blue Ring and the Orbital Reef, uh, space infrastructure projects. What's your vision for these?

Jeff Bezos 14:03 So Blue Ring is a very interesting spacecraft that is d- uh, designed to take up to 3,000 kilograms of payload up to, uh, geosynchronous orbit, or in lunar vicinity. Uh, it has two different kinds of propulsion. It has chemical propulsion, and it has electric propulsion. And so it can, it can be, you can use Blue Ring in a couple different ways. You can slowly move, let's say, up to geosynchronous orbit using electric propulsion. That might take, you know, 100 days or 150 days depending on how much mass you're carrying. Uh, and then, and reserve your chemical propulsion so that you can change orbits quickly in geosynchronous orbit. Or you can use the chemical propulsion first to quickly get up to geosynchronous, and then use your electrical propulsion to slowly change your geosynchronous orbit. Blue Ring has, uh, a couple of interesting features. It's a, uh, it provides a lot of services to these payloads. So the payload, could be one large payload or it can be a number of small payloads, and it provides thermal management, it provides electric power, it provides, uh, compute, um, provides communications. And so when you design a payload for Blue Ring, you don't ha- it's, you don't have to figure out all of those things on your own. So kind of radiation-tolerant compute is a complicated thing to do. And so we have, uh, an unusually large amount of radiation-tolerant compute on board Blue Ring, and you can, your payload can just use that when it needs to. So it's a, uh, uh, it's sort of all these services. It's, you know, it's like a set of APIs. It's a little bit like Amazon Web Services, but for (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 15:52 For space.

Jeff Bezos 15:52 ... for space payloads that need to move about in Earth vicinity or lunar vicinity.

Lex Fridman 15:57 Uh, AWSS.

Jeff Bezos 15:59 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 16:00 Okay, so, uh, so compute and space. So you get, you get a giant chemical rocket to get a payload out to orbit, and then you have these admins that show up, this Blue Ring, uh, thing that manages various things, like compute.

Jeff Bezos 16:14 Exactly. And it can, it can also provide transportation and move you around to different orbits.

Lex Fridman 16:19 Including humans? You think?

Jeff Bezos 16:20 No. Well, Blue Ring is not designed to move humans around. Um, it's designed to move payloads around. So we're also building a lunar lander, uh, which is of course designed to, to land humans on the surface of the moon.

Lex Fridman 16:34 I wanted to ask you about that. Let me,

Lex Fridman 16:36 let me ask you just a step back to the old days. You were at Princeton, uh, with aspirations to be a theo- theoretical physicist.

Jeff Bezos 16:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:46 Um, what attracted you to physics, and why did you change your mind and not become... Why, why are you not Jeff Bezos, the famous theoretical physicist?

Jeff Bezos 16:57 So I loved physics, and I studied physics and computer science, and I was proceeding along, uh, along the physics path. I was planning to major in physics. And I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. And I wa- and the computer science was sort of something I was doing for fun. I really loved it. Um, and I, and I was very good at the programming and doing those things, and I enjoyed all my computer science classes immensely. But I really was determined to be a theoretical physicist. I- that's why I went to Princeton in the first place. It was definitely ... And then I realized I was gonna be a mediocre theoretical physicist, and there were, um, uh, there were a few people in my classes, like in quantum mechanics and so on, who they could effortlessly do things that were so difficult for me. And I realized, like, you know, there are 1,000 ways to be smart.

Lex Fridman 17:50 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 17:50 And to be really ... You know, theoretical physics is not one of those fields where the, uh, you know, only the top few percent actually move the state of the art forward (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 18:02 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 18:02 It's one of those things where you have to be really, uh, just your brain has to be wired in a certain way. And there was a guy named, um ... One of these people who was, uh, convinced me ... He didn't mean to convince me-

Lex Fridman 18:15 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 18:15 ... but just by observing him-

Lex Fridman 18:17 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 18:17 ... he convinced me that I should not try to be a theoretical physicist. His name was Yosanta. And Yosanta...... um, was from Sri Lanka, and he's- he was one of the most brilliant people I'd ever met. My, uh, friend Joe and I were working on a very difficult partial differential equations problem set one night. And there was one problem that we worked on for three hours.

Lex Fridman 18:41 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 18:41 And we made no headway whatsoever, and we looked up at each other at the same time, and we said, "Yosanta." So we went to Yosanta's dorm room.

Lex Fridman 18:51 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 18:52 And he was there, he was almost always there. And we said, "Yosanta, we're having trouble solving this, uh, partial differential equation. Would you mind taking a look?" And he said, "Of course." He- by the way, he was the most humble, most kind person. And so he took our... he looked at our problem, and he stared at it for just a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds, and he said, "Cosine." And I said, "What do you mean, Yosanta? What do you mean, 'cosine'?" He said, "That's the answer."

Lex Fridman 19:19 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 19:19 And I said, "No, no, no. Come on." And he said, "Let me show you." And he took out some paper and he wrote down three pages of equations.

Lex Fridman 19:27 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 19:27 Everything canceled out.

Lex Fridman 19:29 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 19:29 And the answer was cosine. And I said, "Yosanta, did you do that in your head?"

Lex Fridman 19:35 Yeah. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 19:35 And he said, "Oh, no, that would be impossible. A few years ago, I solved a similar problem, and I could map this problem onto that problem, and then it was immediately obvious that the answer was cosine." I had a few... you know, you have an experience like that, you realize maybe being a theoretical physicist (laughs) isn't your... isn't what your- your- your- what the universe wants you to be. And so, uh, I switched to computer science and, um, and, you know, that worked out really well for me. I enjoy it. I still enjoy it today.

Lex Fridman 20:07 Yeah, there's a particular kind of intuition you need to be a great physicist in- a- applied to physics.

Jeff Bezos 20:12 I think the mathematical skill required-

Lex Fridman 20:15 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 20:15 ... today is so high. You have to be a world-class mathematician to be a successful theoretical physicist today. And it's not, you know, it- uh, uh, you probably need other skills too, intuition, lateral thinking, and so on. But without the- without just top-notch math skills, you're unlikely to be successful.

Lex Fridman 20:39 And visualization skill, you have to be able to really kind of do these kind of thought experiments, and if you want a truly great creativity. Actually, Walter Isaacson writes about you, uh, puts you on the same level as Einstein. Uh, and-

Jeff Bezos 20:52 Well, he's- he's... (laughs) that's very kind, but (laughs) I have-

Lex Fridman 20:56 Sorry. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 20:56 ... I'm an inventor. If you- if you wanna boil down what I am, I'm really an inventor, and I look at things and I can come up with atypical solutions and, you know, I- and then I can create 100 such atypical solutions for something, and 99 of them may not survive, you know, (laughs) scrutiny, but one of those 100 is like, "Hmm, maybe there is... maybe that might work," and then you can keep going from there. So that kind of lateral thinking, that kind of, uh, inventiveness i- in a high dimensionality space where the search space is very large, that's where my inventive skills come- that's the thing I'm... if- if I- I self-identify as an inventor more than anything else.

Lex Fridman 21:43 Yeah, and he describes in all kinds of different ways, Walter Isaacson does, that, uh, creativity, uh, combined with childlike, uh, wonder that you've maintained still to this day, all of that combined together. Is there... like, if you were to study your own brain, introspect, how do you think? What's your thinking process like? We'll talk about the writing process of putting it down on paper.

Jeff Bezos 22:06 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 22:07 Uh, which is quite rigorous and, uh, famous, uh, at- at, uh, Amazon, but how do you, when you sit down, maybe alone, maybe with others, and thinking through this high-dimensional space and looking for creative solutions, uh, creative paths forward, is there something you could say about that process?

Jeff Bezos 22:26 It's such a good question, and I honestly don't know how it works.

Lex Fridman 22:30 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 22:31 If I did, I would try to explain it.

Lex Fridman 22:33 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 22:33 I know it involves lots of wandering.

Lex Fridman 22:35 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 22:36 So I- you know, when I sit down to work on a problem, I know I don't know where I'm going.

Lex Fridman 22:43 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 22:43 So to- to go in a straight line, to be efficient, efficiency and invention are sort of at odds because invention, real invention, not incremental improvement... incremental improvement is so important in- in every endeavor and everything you do, you have to work hard on also just making things a little bit better. But I'm talking about real invention, real lateral thinking. That requires wandering.

Lex Fridman 23:08 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 23:08 And you have to give yourself permission to wander. I think a lot of people, um, they feel like wandering is inefficient and sh- you know, like, when- when I sit down at a meeting, I don't know how long the meeting is gonna take if we're trying to solve a problem, because if I did, uh, then I'd already- I could- I'd know there's some kind of straight line that we're drawing to the solution. The reality is, we may have to wander for a long time. And I do like group invention. I think there's really nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a- a num- you know, a group of smart people and spitballing and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth. So, like, um, you know, sometimes you wake up with an idea in the middle of the night, and sometimes you sit down with a group of people and go back and forth, and both things are really pleasurable. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:14 Mm-hmm. And when you wander, I think one key thing is to notice a good idea and to- to- to- to- maybe to no- notice the kernel of a good idea, maybe pull at that string.... because I, I don't think, uh, good ideas come fully formed.

Jeff Bezos 24:31 A h- a hundred percent right. Th- i- in fact, when I come up with what I think is a good idea and it survives kind of, the first level of scrutiny, you know, that I do in my own head, and I'm ready to tell somebody else about the idea-

Lex Fridman 24:45 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 24:45 ... I will often say, "Look, it is going to be really easy for you to find objections-

Lex Fridman 24:50 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 24:50 ... to this idea, but work with me."

Lex Fridman 24:53 There's something there.

Jeff Bezos 24:54 There's something there, and that is intuition.

Lex Fridman 24:57 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 24:57 You, uh, because it's really easy to kill new ideas i- in the beginning 'cause they do have so many, so many easy objections to them. So you need to, uh, you need to kind of forewarn people and say, "Look, I know it's gonna take a lot of work to get this to a fully formed idea. Let's get started on that. It'll be fun."

Lex Fridman 25:16 Mm-hmm. So you got that ability to say cosine in you somewhere after all.

Jeff Bezos 25:20 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:22 Maybe not on math, but-

Jeff Bezos 25:23 In a different domain.

Lex Fridman 25:24 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 25:25 There are a thousand ways to be smart, by the way.

Lex Fridman 25:27 Yeah (laughs) .

Jeff Bezos 25:28 And that is a really, like, when I go around, you know, and, and I meet people, I'm always looking for the way that they're smart, and you find it is, that's one of the things that makes the world so interesting and fun is that it is not, i- it's not like IQ is a single-

Lex Fridman 25:47 Yep.

Jeff Bezos 25:47 ... dimension. There are people who are smart in such unique ways.

Lex Fridman 25:53 Yeah. You just gave me a good response to when somebody calls me an idiot on the internet.

Jeff Bezos 25:57 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:57 Like, you know, there's a thousand ways to be smart, so... (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 26:01 Well, but, well, th- they might tell you, "Yeah, but there are a million to be, ways to be dumb."

Lex Fridman 26:04 To be dumb, yeah, right.

Jeff Bezos 26:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 26:06 I feel like that's a Mark Twain quote. Okay.

Lex Fridman 26:10 (laughs) All right. You gave me an amazing tour of Blue Origin rocket factory and launch complex in the historic Cape Canaveral. Uh, that's where New Glenn, the, the big rocket we talked about is, uh, being built and will launch. Can you explain what the New Glenn rocket is and, uh, tell me some interesting technical aspects of how it works?

Jeff Bezos 26:29 Sure. Um, uh, New Glenn is a, uh, uh, a very large, uh, heavy lift launch vehicle. It'll take about 45 metric tons to LEO, uh, very, uh, very large class. Um, it's about half the thrust, a little more than half the thrust of the Saturn V, uh, rocket. So it's about 3.9 million pounds of thrust on lift off. The booster has seven BE-4 engines. The, each engine generates a little more than 550,000 pounds of thrust. The engines are fueled by liquid natural gas, liquified natural gas, LNG as the fuel, and LOX as the oxidizer. The cycle is an ox enriched staged combustion cycle. It's a cycle that was really pioneered by the Russians. It's a very good cycle. Um, uh, and that engine is also going to power the first stage of the Vulcan rocket, which is the United Launch Alliance rocket. Um, then the second stage of New Glenn, uh, is powered by two BE-3U engines, which is a upper stage variant of our New Shepard liquid hydrogen engine. So the BE-3U has 160,000 pounds of thrust. So two of those, 320,000 pounds of thrust. And hydrogen is a very good propellant for upper stages because it has very high ISP. It's not a great propellant, in my view, for booster stages because the stages then get physically so large. Hydrogen has very high ISP, but liquid hydrogen is, uh, very, is not dense at all. So to store liquid hydrogen, you know, if you need to store many thousands of pounds of liquid hydrogen, your tanks, your liquid hydrogen tank gets very large. So, uh, you really, you get more benefit from the higher ISP, the specific impulse, you get more benefit from the higher specific impulse on the second stage. And that stage carries less propellant, so you don't get such geometrically gigantic tanks.

Lex Fridman 28:40 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 28:41 The Delta IV is an example of a vehicle that is all hydrogen. The booster stage is also hydrogen.

Lex Fridman 28:47 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 28:47 And I think that it's a very effective vehicle, but it never was very cost-effective. Um, so it's operationally very capable, but not very cost-effective.

Lex Fridman 28:56 So size is also costly?

Jeff Bezos 28:58 Size is costly. So th- it's interesting. Rockets love to be big.

Lex Fridman 29:03 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 29:03 Everything works better, uh-

Lex Fridman 29:05 What do you mean by that? You've told me that before. It sounds epic, but what does it mean?

Jeff Bezos 29:08 (laughs) I mean, when you look at the, kind of the physics of rocket engines, uh, and also when you look at parasitic mass, it doesn't, if you have, let's say you have an avionic system, so you have a guidance and control system, that is gonna be about the same mass and size for a giant rocket as it is gonna be for a tiny rocket.

Lex Fridman 29:32 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 29:33 And so, that's just parasitic mass that is very consequential if you're building a very small rocket, but is trivial if you're building a very large rocket. So you have the parasitic mass thing. And then if you look at, for example, rocket engines have turbo pumps. They have to pressurize the fuel and the oxidizer up to a very high pressure level in order to inject it into the thrust chamber where it burns. And those pumps, all rotating machines, in fact, get more efficient as they get larger. So really tiny turbo pumps are very challenging to manufacture, and any kind of gaps, you know, uh, or like, b- between the housing, for example, and the rotating impeller that pressurizes the fuel, there has to be some gap there. You can't have those parts scraping against one another.

Lex Fridman 30:27 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 30:27 And those gaps...... drive inefficiencies. And so, you know, if you have a l- very large turbo pump, those gaps in percentage terms end up being very small. And so, there's a bunch of things that, uh, that w- that w- you end up loving about having a large rocket-

Lex Fridman 30:45 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 30:46 ... and that you end up hating for a small rocket. But there's a giant exception to this rule, and it is manufacturing. So manufacturing large structures is very, very challenging. It's a pain in the butt. And so, you know, it's just h- ha- you know, if you have a ... If you're making a small rocket engine, you can move all the pieces by hand. You can assemble it on a table. One person can do it. Um, you know, you don't need cranes and heavy lift operations, and tooling, and so on, and so on. When you start building big objects, uh, the infrastructure, civil infrastructure-

Lex Fridman 31:20 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 31:20 ... just like the launch pad, and the, you know, all this w- we went and visited.

Lex Fridman 31:24 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 31:24 I took you to the launch pad, and you can see it's so monumental.

Lex Fridman 31:27 Yeah, it is.

Jeff Bezos 31:28 Um, and so just these things become major, uh, undertakings, both from an engineering point of view, but also from a construction and cost point of view.

Lex Fridman 31:37 And even the, uh, the foundation of the launch pad, I mean, this is Florida, like, isn't it, like, swamp land? Like, how deep do you have to go?

Jeff Bezos 31:44 (laughs) You have to, uh, at Cape Canaveral-

Lex Fridman 31:46 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 31:46 ... um, and in fact, most ocean, you know, right, most launch pads are (laughs) are on beaches somewhere in the ocean side-

Lex Fridman 31:52 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 31:52 ... 'cause you wanna launch over water for safety reasons. Um, the, uh ... Yes, you have to drive pilings, you know, dozens, and dozens, and dozens of pilings, you know, 50, 100, 150 feet deep to get enough structural integrity for these very large ... You know, it's, it's, uh ... Yes, these turn into major civil engineering projects.

Lex Fridman 32:15 I just have to say, everything about that factory is pretty badass. You said-

Jeff Bezos 32:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:18 ... tooling. The bigger it gets, the more, (laughs) the more epic it is. Do you-

Jeff Bezos 32:22 It does make it epic.

Lex Fridman 32:23 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 32:23 It's fun to look at.

Lex Fridman 32:24 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 32:24 It's extraordinary.

Lex Fridman 32:26 It's humbling, also-

Jeff Bezos 32:27 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:27 ... 'cause we are humans, are so small compared to it.

Jeff Bezos 32:29 W- we are building these im- enormous machines that are harnessing enormous amounts of, uh, chemical, uh, power, um, you know, in very, very compact packages. It's truly extraordinary.

Lex Fridman 32:44 But then there's all the different components, uh, and that you, you know, the materials involved. Is there something interesting that's, you can describe about the materials, uh, that comprise the rocket? So, it has to be as light as possible, I guess, whilst withstanding the heat and the harsh conditions?

Jeff Bezos 33:03 Yeah. I play a little kind of game sometimes w- with other rocket people that I run into where I say, "What are the things that would amaze the 1960s engineers?"

Lex Fridman 33:13 Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Bezos 33:14 Like, what, what's changed? 'Cause-

Lex Fridman 33:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 33:16 ... uh, surprisingly, some of rocketry's greatest hits have not changed. They are still ... They would recognize immediately a lot of what we do today, and it's exactly what they pioneered back in the '60s. But a few things have changed. Um, uh, you know, the use of carbon composites is, is very different today. Um, you know, we can build very sophisticated ... You saw our carbon tape laying machine that builds the giant fairings.

Lex Fridman 33:44 Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 33:45 And we can build these incredibly light, very stiff fairing structures out of carbon composite material that they could not have dreamed of. I mean, the, the efficiency, the structural efficiency of that material is so high compared to any, you know, metallic material you might use, or anything else. So, that's one. Um, uh, aluminum lithium, and the ability to friction stir weld aluminum lithium. Do you remember our, the friction stir welding-

Lex Fridman 34:19 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 34:19 ... that I showed you?

Lex Fridman 34:20 Yeah. Incredible.

Jeff Bezos 34:20 This, this is a, a remarkable technology. It was invented decades ago, but has become very practical over the, just the last couple of decades. And instead of using heat to weld two pieces of metal together, it literally stirs the two pieces. There's a, a pin that rotates at a certain rate, and you put that pin between the two plates of metal that you wanna weld together, and then you move it at a, at a very precise speed, um, and it, instead of heating the material, it heats it a little bit because of friction, but not very much. You can literally ... Immediately after welding with stir friction welding, you can touch the material and it's just barely warm. Um, it's, it literally stirs the molecules together. It's quite extraordinary.

Lex Fridman 35:05 Relatively low temperature, and I guess high temperature's what makes the, the, the, that's the we- that makes it a weak point.

Jeff Bezos 35:11 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 35:12 Oh.

Jeff Bezos 35:12 So with traditional-

Lex Fridman 35:13 It's amazing.

Jeff Bezos 35:13 With traditional welding techniques, you may have whatever the underlying strength characteristics of the material are, you end up with weak regions where you weld.

Lex Fridman 35:24 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 35:24 And with friction stir welding, the welds are just as strong as the bulk material.

Lex Fridman 35:29 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 35:29 So, it really allows you ... And so, 'cause when you're, you know, let's say you're building a tank that you're gonna pressurize, you know, a large, you know, liquid natural gas tank for our, for our booster stage, for example. You know, if you are welding that with traditional methods, you have to size those weld lands, the thickness of those pieces, with that knockdown for whatever damage you're doing with the weld, and that's gonna add a lot of weight to that tank.

Lex Fridman 35:53 I mean, uh, even just, uh, looking at the fairings, the result of that, the, the complex shape that it takes, and-

Jeff Bezos 36:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:01 ... and like, what it's supposed to do, it is kind of incredible 'cause, uh, for people who don't know, what's on top of the rocket's gonna fall apart. That's its task, but it has to stay strong sometimes-

Jeff Bezos 36:11 (laughs) Yes.

Lex Fridman 36:12 ... and then, uh, disappear when it needs to.

Jeff Bezos 36:14 That's right.

Lex Fridman 36:15 Which is a very difficult task.

Jeff Bezos 36:17 Yes. When you need something that needs to have 100% integrity-

Lex Fridman 36:22 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 36:22 ... until it needs to have 0% integrity-

Lex Fridman 36:24 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 36:24 ... it needs to stay attached until it's ready to go away, and then when it goes away, it has to go away completely, you use explosive charges for that.And so it's a very robust way of separating structure, uh, when you need to.

Lex Fridman 36:40 Exploding.

Jeff Bezos 36:41 Yeah, in little, little tiny bits of explosive material. Um, and, uh, it just... It'll sever the whole connection.

Lex Fridman 36:50 So, if you wanna go from 100% structural integrity to zero as fast as possible, it's explosives.

Jeff Bezos 36:58 Use explosives. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 37:00 The entirety of this thing is so badass. Okay, so we're back to the two stages. So, the, the first stage is reusable.

Jeff Bezos 37:06 Yeah. Second stage is expendable. Second stage is liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, so we get to take advantage of the higher specific impulse. Um, the, uh, the first stage, uh, lands downrange on a landing platform in the ocean, um, comes back for maintenance and get ready to do the next mission.

Lex Fridman 37:27 Um, I mean, there's a million questions, but also, is there a, a path towards reusability for the second stage?

Jeff Bezos 37:32 There is, and we know how to do that. Um, right now, uh, we're gonna work on manufacturing that second stage to make it as inexpensive as possible. Sort of two paths for a second stage. Make it reusable, um, uh, or work really hard to make it inexpensive so you can afford to expend it, and th- that trade is actually not obvious which one is better.

Lex Fridman 38:00 Even in terms of cost, even, like time, cost, all that stuff?

Jeff Bezos 38:02 Even in terms of cost, and I'm, I'm talking about cost. Is it... You know, space fl- getting into orbit is a solved problem, we solved it back in, you know, the '50s and '60s.

Lex Fridman 38:11 You're making it sound easy.

Jeff Bezos 38:12 The, the only thing that... The only interesting problem is dramatically reducing the cost of access to orbit, w- which is, if, if you can do that, you open up a bunch of new, uh, you know, endeavors that lots of startup companies everybody else couldn't do. So that's... We really... W- that's our, one of our missions is to, you know, be part of this industry and lower the cost to orbit so that there can be, you know, a kind of a renaissance, uh, a golden age of people doing all kinds of interesting things in space.

Lex Fridman 38:47 I like how you said, uh, getting to orbit is a solved problem. Uh, it's just, the only interesting thing is reducing the cost. You know you can describe every single problem facing human civilization that way?

Jeff Bezos 38:57 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 38:57 I mean, a physicist would say, "Everything is a solved problem. We've solved everything. The rest is just," uh, Rutherford said this, "It's just stamp collecting."

Jeff Bezos 39:06 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 39:06 It's just the details. Some of the greatest innovations and inventions and, you know, brilliance is, uh, in that cost-reduction stage, right? And you, you've had a long career of cost reduction.

Jeff Bezos 39:18 For sure, and if, you know, when you... What does cost reduction really mean? It means inventing a better way.

Lex Fridman 39:24 Yeah, exactly.

Jeff Bezos 39:25 Right? And when you invent a better way, you make the whole world richer. So, you know, whatever it was, I don't know how many thousands of years ago, somebody invented the plow.

Lex Fridman 39:33 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 39:34 And when they invented the plow, they made the whole world richer because they made farming less expensive. Um, and so it, it is a big deal to m- to invent better ways. That's how the world gets richer.

Lex Fridman 39:48 So, uh, what are some of the, the biggest challenges on the manufacturing side, on the engineering side, that you're facing in, uh, working to get, uh, to the first launch of New Glenn?

Jeff Bezos 40:01 The first launch is one thing, we- and we'll do that in 2024 coming up in this coming year. The real thing that's the bigger challenge is making sure that our factory is efficiently, uh, uh, manufacturing at rate. So rate production. So consider if you want to launch New Glenn, you know, 24 times a year. You need to manufacture a upper stage since they're expendable, uh, every, you know, twice a month. You need to do one every two weeks. So you need to be, you need to have all of your manufacturing facilities and processes and inspection techniques and acceptance tests and everything operating at rate. And rate manufacturing is at least as difficult as designing the vehicle in the first place, and the same thing. So every, every, uh, uh, upper stage has two BE-3U engines. So those engines, you know, you need, if, if you're gonna launch th- the vehicle twice a month, you need four engines a month, so you need an engine every week. So you need to be... That engine needs to be being produced at rate. And th- and that's a, um... And there's all of the things that you need to do that, all the right machine tools, all the right fixtures, uh, the right people, process, et cetera. So it's one thing to build a first article.

Lex Fridman 41:29 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 41:30 Right? So that's... Y- you know, we... To launch New Glenn for the first time, you need to produce a first article, but that's not the hard part. The hard part is everything that's going on behind the scenes to build a factory that can produce New Glenns at rate.

Lex Fridman 41:47 So the first one is produced in a way that's... Enables the production of the second, third and the fourth and the fifth and sixth

Jeff Bezos 41:53 You could think of the first article as kind of pushing... It, it pushes all of the rate manufacturing, uh, technology along. You know, in other words, it's kind of the, uh, you know, it's the test article in a way that's testing out your f- your manufacturing technologies.

Lex Fridman 42:13 So manufacturing is the big challenge.

Jeff Bezos 42:15 Yes. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like any of it is easy. I mean, the people who are designing the engines and all this, so all of it is hard.

Lex Fridman 42:23 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 42:23 Um, for sure. But the, but the challenge right now is driving really hard to get to, uh, is to get to rate manufacturing, to do that in an efficient way. Again, kind of back to our cost point.... if you get to rate manufacturing in an inefficient way, you haven't really solved the cost problem, and maybe you're, haven't really moved the state-of-the-art forward. All this has to be about moving the state-of-the-art forward. There are easier, easier businesses to do. I always tell people, "Look, if you are trying to make money, w- you know, like start a salty snack food company or something." You know, you (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 42:58 Can you write that idea down?

Jeff Bezos 42:59 (laughs) Like, make the Lex Fridman potato chips. You know, this, this is-

Lex Fridman 43:04 Okay. Don't, don't say it. Then people are gonna steal it.

Jeff Bezos 43:08 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 43:09 (laughs) But yeah. It's hard-

Jeff Bezos 43:09 You see what I'm saying? It's like there's nothing easy about this business, and, um, but, but it's its own reward. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's fascinating. It's worthwhile. It's meaningful. And so, you know, I, you know, not, I don't wanna pick on salty snack food companies, but I think it's, it's less meaningful. You know, at the end of the day, you're not gonna, you're, you're not gonna have accomplished something amazing.

Lex Fridman 43:33 Yeah. There's some-

Jeff Bezos 43:33 Even if you do make a lot of money on it.

Lex Fridman 43:35 Yeah. There's something fundamentally different about the quote unquote "business" of space exploration.

Jeff Bezos 43:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:41 I-

Jeff Bezos 43:41 It's a-

Lex Fridman 43:42 For sure. It's a grand project of humanity.

Jeff Bezos 43:44 Yes. It's one of humanity's grand challenges.

Lex Fridman 43:47 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 43:47 And especially as you look at going to the moon and going to Mars and building giant O'Neill Colonies and unlocking all the thing, uh, you know, I won't live long enough to see the fruits of this. But the fruits of this come from building a road to space, getting the infrastructure. I'll give you an analogy. When I started Amazon, I didn't have to develop a payment system. It already existed. It was called the credit card. I didn't have to develop a transportation system to deliver the packages. It already existed. It was called the postal service and Royal Mail and Deutsche Post and so on. So all this heavy lifting infrastructure was already in place, and I could stand on its shoulders. And that's why when you look at the internet, um, you know, it... By the way, another giant piece of infrastructure that was around in the early, I'm taking you back to, like 1994, people were using dial-up modems, and it was piggybacking on top of the long distance phone network. That's how the internet, that's, you know, how people were accessing servers and so on. And that again, if, if that hadn't existed, it would've been hundreds of billions of CapEx to, to put that out there. No startup company could have done that. And so the problem, you know, you see in, if you look at the dynamism in the internet space over the last 20 years, it's because, you know, you see like two kids in a dorm room could start a internet company that could be successful and do amazing things, because they didn't have to build heavy infrastructure. It was already there. And that's what I wanna do. I'd take, you know, my Amazon winnings and use that to build heavy infrastructure so the next generation, you know, my, the generation that's my children and their children, these, you know, the, those generations can then use that heavy infrastructure, then there'll be space entrepreneurs who start in their dorm room.

Lex Fridman 45:53 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 45:53 Like that, that will be a marker of success when you can have a really valuable space company started in a dorm room, then we know that we've built enough infrastructure so that ingenuity and imagination can really be unleashed. I find that very exciting.

Lex Fridman 46:10 As (laughs) they will, of course, as kids do, uh, take all of this hard infrastructure ability for granted. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 46:16 Of course. That's a, that's-

Lex Fridman 46:17 Which is the entrepreneurial spirit. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 46:19 That's a, um, an inventor's, uh, greatest dream-

Lex Fridman 46:23 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 46:23 ... is that their inventions are so successful that they are one day taken for granted. You know, nobody thinks of Amazon as an invention anymore. Nobody thinks of customer reviews as an inv-

Lex Fridman 46:33 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 46:34 We pioneered customer reviews, but now they're so commonplace. Same thing with one-click shopping and so on.

Lex Fridman 46:39 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 46:39 But that's a compliment.

Lex Fridman 46:40 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 46:40 That's how, you know, you, you s- you invent something that's so used, so beneficially used by so many people that they take it for granted.

Lex Fridman 46:49 I don't know about nobody. I s- every time I use Amazon, I'm still amazed, how does this work?

Jeff Bezos 46:53 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 46:53 The logistics, the w- the, uh-

Jeff Bezos 46:55 Well, you, you're, that, that proves you're a very curious explorer right there.

Lex Fridman 46:57 All right. All right. Back to rockets. Timeline. (laughs) You said 2024. Uh, as it stands now, are both the first test launch and the launch of the EscaPADE explorers to Mars still possible in 2024?

Jeff Bezos 47:12 In 2024?

Lex Fridman 47:12 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 47:13 Yeah, I think so. Um, for sure the first launch, and then we'll see if, if EscaPADE goes on that or not. I think that the first launch for sure, and I hope EscaPADE too.

Lex Fridman 47:22 Uh, hope?

Jeff Bezos 47:24 Well, I just don't know which mission it's n- it's actually gonna be slated on.

Lex Fridman 47:28 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 47:28 So we also have other things that might go on that first mission.

Lex Fridman 47:31 Oh, I got it. But you're optimistic that, uh, the launches will still happen?

Jeff Bezos 47:35 Oh, the first launch, I'm very optimistic that the first launch of New Glenn will be in 2024. And I'm just not 100% certain what payload will be on that first launch.

Lex Fridman 47:44 Are you nervous about it?

Jeff Bezos 47:46 Are you kidding? I'm extremely nervous about it. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:51 Oh, man.

Jeff Bezos 47:52 100%. I've, you know, every, uh, every launch I go to, uh, you know, for New Shepard, for, uh, other vehicles too, I'm always nervous for these launches. But yes, for sure. A first launch, to have no nervousness about that would be, you know, some sign of derangement, I think, so.

Lex Fridman 48:09 Well, I got to visit the launch pad. It's pretty, um... I mean, it's epic.

Jeff Bezos 48:14 You know, we have done a tremendous amount of ground testing, a tremendous amount of, uh, simulation. So, uh, you know, a lot of the problems that we might find in flight have been resolved. But there are some problems you can only find in flight. So, you know, cross your fingers.

Lex Fridman 48:33 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 48:33 Uh, I guarantee you, you'll, uh, you'll have fun watching it no matter what happens.

Lex Fridman 48:37 100%. When the thing is fully assembled and comes up.

Jeff Bezos 48:40 (laughs) Yeah, the, the (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 48:42 That just-

Jeff Bezos 48:43 ... the transporter erector, just-

Lex Fridman 48:44 The erector, yeah.

Jeff Bezos 48:45 ... just the transporter erector for a rocket of this scale-

Lex Fridman 48:48 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 48:48 ... is extraordinary.

Lex Fridman 48:49 That's an incredible machine.

Jeff Bezos 48:50 The vehicle, uh, travels out horizontally and then...... kind of-

Lex Fridman 48:55 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 48:55 ... uh, you know, comes up and-

Lex Fridman 48:57 Over a few hours?

Jeff Bezos 48:58 ... it's a beauti- yeah, it's a beautiful thing to watch.

Lex Fridman 49:00 Uh, speaking of which, if that makes you nervous, I don't know if you remember, but you, uh, were aboard, uh, New Shepard on its first crewed flight. Uh, how was that experience? Were you, were you terrified then?

Jeff Bezos 49:20 You know, strangely, I wasn't. You know, I-

Lex Fridman 49:22 When you ride the rocket-

Jeff Bezos 49:23 (laughs) It's true.

Lex Fridman 49:24 ... it's less nerve-wracking? Okay.

Jeff Bezos 49:25 I've watched other people riding the rocket, and I'm more nervous than when I was inside the rocket myself. Um, it was a difficult conversation to have with my mother, uh, when I told her (laughs) I was gonna go on the first one.

Lex Fridman 49:38 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 49:38 And not only was I gonna go, but I was gonna bring my brother too.

Lex Fridman 49:41 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 49:41 This is a tough conversation to have with a mom.

Lex Fridman 49:44 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 49:44 And-

Lex Fridman 49:44 There's a long pause when you told her.

Jeff Bezos 49:47 (laughs) She's like, "Both of you?" Um, uh, uh, uh, it was an incredible experience, and we were, we were laughing in- inside the capsule, and, you know, were not nervous. Um, the people on the ground were f- very nervous for us. Um, uh, it was actually one of the most emotionally powerful parts of the experience, was not w- uh, happened even before the flight. At 4:30 in the morning, brother and I are getting ready to go to the launch site, and Lauren is gonna take us there in her helicopter, and we're getting ready to leave. And we go outside, outside the ranch house there in, in West Texas where the launch facility is, and all of our family, my kids, and my brother's kids, and our, you know, our, our, uh, our sp- uh, uh, parents, and, uh, f- close friends are assembled there. And they're saying goodbye to us, but they're kind of saying ... maybe they think they're saying goodbye to us forever.

Lex Fridman 50:53 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 50:54 And, you know, we might not have felt that way, but it was obvious from their faces how nervous they were, that they felt that way. And it was sort of powerful because it allowed us to s- it was almost like attending your own memorial service or something. Like, you could feel how loved you were in that moment. Um, and it was, uh, it was really amazing.

Lex Fridman 51:12 Yeah, and I mean there's just a epic nature to it too.

Jeff Bezos 51:17 The ascent, the floating in zero gravity, I'll tell you something very interesting. Zero gravity feels very natural. I don't know if it's because-

Lex Fridman 51:27 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 51:27 ... we are, you know, it's like a return to the womb or what it is.

Lex Fridman 51:30 I- you just confirmed you're an alien, but that's all right.

Jeff Bezos 51:33 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:33 I think that's was, I think that's what y- you just said.

Jeff Bezos 51:36 Feels so natural to be in zero G.

Lex Fridman 51:38 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 51:38 It was really interesting.

Lex Fridman 51:39 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 51:39 And then, when people talk about the overview effect and seeing Earth from space, I had that feeling very powerfully. I think everyone did. Um, you see how fragile the Earth is. If you're not an environmentalist, it will make you one. Uh, the r- the great Jim Lovell quote, you know, he looked back at the Earth from space, and he said he realized, "You don't go to heaven when you die. You go to heaven when you're born." And it's just, you know, that's the feeling that people get when they're in space. You see all this blackness, all this nothingness, and there's one gem of life-

Lex Fridman 52:13 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 52:14 ... and it's Earth.

Lex Fridman 52:15 It is a gem. Uh, what, you know, you're, you've talked a lot about decision-making throughout your time with Amazon. What was that decision like, to, uh, to ri- to be the first to ride New Shepard? Like what, just be- before you talked to your mom.

Jeff Bezos 52:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:31 What, uh, what, like w- the pros and cons. Like, actually as one human being, as a, as a leader of a company, um, on all fronts, like what was that decision-making like?

Jeff Bezos 52:43 I decided that, uh, first of all, I knew the vehicle extremely well. I know the team who built it. I know the vehicle. Um, the, uh, I'm very comfortable with the, like the escape system. We put as much effort into the escape system on that vehicle as we put into all the rest of the vehicle combined. It's one of the hardest pieces of engineering in the entire New Shepard architecture.

Lex Fridman 53:10 Can you actually describe what do you mean by escape system, what's involved?

Jeff Bezos 53:13 We have a solid rocket motor in the base of the crew capsule, so that if anything goes wrong on ascent, you know, while the main rocket engine is firing, we can ignite this solid rocket motor in the base of the crew capsule and escape from the booster. It's a very challenging system to build, design, validate, test, all of these things. It is the reason that I am comfortable letting anyone go on New Shepard. So the, the, the booster is as safe and reliable as we can make it. But, um, we are harnessing ... whenever you're talking about rocket engines, I don't care what rocket engine you're talking about, you are harnessing such vast power in such a small, compact, geometric space. The power density is so enormous that it is impossible to ever be sure that nothing will go wrong.

Lex Fridman 54:17 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 54:18 And so, the only way to, um, improve safety is to have an escape system. And, you know, and historically, rockets, human-rated rockets have had escape systems. Only the space shuttle did not. And, um, but Apollo had one. Um, the, you know, um, all of the previous, you know, Gemini, et cetera, they all had escape systems. And, uh, we have, on New Shepard, a unusual escape s- most escape systems are towers. We have a pusher escape system. So the solid rocket motor is actually embedded in the base of the crew capsule-

Lex Fridman 54:53 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 54:53 ... and it pushes. And it's reusable in the sense that if we don't use it...So if we have a nominal mission, we land with it. The tower systems have to be ejected at a certain point in the mission, and so they get wasted even in a nominal mission. And so again, you know, cost really matters on these things, so we figured out how to have the escape system be a reusable... Uh, in the event that it's not used, you can reuse it, um, and have it be a pusher system. It's a very sophisticated thing. So I knew these things. You asked me about my decision to go. And so I know the vehicle very well. I know the people who, uh, designed it. I have great trust in them, um, and in the engineering that we did. Uh, and I thought to myself, "Look, if I am not ready to go, then I wouldn't want anyone to go." The, a tourism vehicle has to be designed, in my view, to have very, to be as safe as one can make it. Uh, uh, uh, you can't make it perfectly safe. It's impossible, but you know, you just have to, y- y- you know, people will do thing, people take risk, you know, they climb mountains, they, you know, they skydive, they, you know, s- do deep underwater scuba diving and so on. People are okay taking risk. You can't eliminate the risk, but it is something, because it's a tourism vehicle, you have to do your utmost to eliminate those risks, and I felt very good about the system. I think it's one of the reasons I was so calm (laughs) inside, and maybe others weren't as calm 'cause they didn't know as much about it as I did.

Lex Fridman 56:26 Who was in charge of engaging the escape system? Did you have a sense-

Jeff Bezos 56:28 It's automated.

Lex Fridman 56:29 Okay.

Jeff Bezos 56:30 The escape system is c-

Lex Fridman 56:31 I was visualizing a button .

Jeff Bezos 56:32 ... is c-

Lex Fridman 56:32 ... sorry.

Jeff Bezos 56:32 ... is completely automated. Automated is better because it can react so much faster.

Lex Fridman 56:38 Yeah. So yeah, for, for tourism rockets, safety is a huge, huge, huge priority, for space exploration also, but a li- a ti- you know, a delta less.

Jeff Bezos 56:46 Yes, I mean, I think for, you know, if you're doing, you know, there are human activities where we tolerate more risk. If you're saving somebody's life, you know, it, um, if you are, you know, engaging in real exploration, um, these are things where, you know, I personally think you, we would accept more risk, in part because you have to.

Lex Fridman 57:09 Is there a part of you that's frustrated by the rate of progress in Blue Origin?

Jeff Bezos 57:16 Blue Origin needs to be much faster, and it's one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon, uh, a couple of years ago. I needed, I wanted to come in and, um, Blue Origin needs me right now. And so I had always, when I was the CEO of Amazon, my point of view on this is, is if I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company, it's gonna get my full attention, and I really, uh, it's just how I think about things. I, it was very important to me. I felt I had an obligation to all the stakeholders at Amazon, uh, to do that. Um, and so having, you know, turned the CE- I was still the executive chair there, but I turned the CEO role over, and the reason, (laughs) the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Blue Origin, adding some, you know, energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster, and we're going to.

Lex Fridman 58:12 (laughs) Uh, what are the ways to speed it up? So I mean, th- there's, uh... and you've talked a lot of different ways to sort of, uh, at, at a- at Amazon, um, you know, removing, uh, barriers for, for, for progress, sort of distributing, making everybody autonomous and self-reliant in term, all the, all those kinds of things. Is that apply at Blue Origin, or is the-

Jeff Bezos 58:37 It does apply. I know I'm l- leading this directly. We are gonna become the world's most decisive company across any industry, and so, you know, at Amazon for, you know, for ever since the beginning, I said, "We're gonna become the world's most customer-obsessed company."

Lex Fridman 58:59 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 58:59 And no matter the industry, like people, one day people are going to come to Amazon from the healthcare industry and wanna know, "How did you guys, how do you, how are you so customer-obsessed? How do you act, not just pay lip service to that, but actually do that?"

Lex Fridman 59:12 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 59:13 Um, and from, you know, all, all different industries should come wanna study us to see how we accomplish that. And the analogous thing at Blue Origin, and what will help us move faster, is we're gonna become the world's most decisive company. We're gonna get really good at taking appropriate technology risk and making those decisions quickly, um, you know, being bold on those things. That's what, and, and having the right culture that supports that. You need people to be ambitious, technically ambitious, you know. If there are five ways to do something, we'll study them, but let's study them very quickly and make a decision. We can always change our mind. Uh, it doesn't... You know, changing your mind is, uh, I talk about one-way doors and two-way doors. Most decisions are two-way doors.

Lex Fridman 1:00:03 Can you explain that? 'Cause it's, I, I love that, uh, metaphor.

Jeff Bezos 1:00:06 If you make the wrong decision, if it's a two-way door decision, you walk out the door, you pick a door, you walk out-

Lex Fridman 1:00:14 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:00:14 ... and you spend a little time there. It turns out to be the wrong decision (laughs) . You can come back in and pick another door. Some decisions are so consequential and so important and so hard to reverse that they really are one-way door decisions. You go in that door, you're not coming back.

Lex Fridman 1:00:31 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:00:32 And those decisions have to be made very deliberately, very carefully. Um, if you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that. So, you know, uh, when I was CEO of Amazon, I often found myself in the position of being the chief slow-down officer.

Lex Fridman 1:00:51 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:00:52 Because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision, and I would say, "Okay, I can think of three more ways to analyze that, so let's go do that."... because we ha- we are not gonna be able to reverse this one easily, or we- maybe you can reverse it, but it's gonna be very costly and very time-consuming. We really have to get this one right from the beginning. And, uh, th- what happens unfortunately in companies, what can happen, is that you have a one-size-fits-all decision-making process, where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions-

Lex Fridman 1:01:28 For everything, yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:01:29 ... including the lightweight ones, the- the two-way door decisions. Two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization.

Lex Fridman 1:01:40 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:01:41 And one-way door decisions are the ones that- that are- they're irreversible ones, those are the ones that should be elevated up, uh, to, you know, the senior-most executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.

Lex Fridman 1:01:55 Yeah. I mean, part of the skill here is t- to- to know the difference between one-way and two-way. I think you mentioned-

Jeff Bezos 1:01:59 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:02:00 Yeah. I mean, I think you mentioned Amazon Prime. Uh, the decision to sort of create Amazon Prime as a one-way door. And it- I mean, it's n- it's unclear if it is or not, but it probably is, and it's a really big risk to go there.

Jeff Bezos 1:02:14 There are a bunch of decisions like that, that are, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, changing the decision is gonna be very, very complicated. Some of them are technical decisions too, because some technical decisions are like quick-drying cement. You know, if you're gonna, once you make them, it gets really hard. I mean, you know, choosing which propellants to use in a vehicle. You know, selecting LNG for the booster stage, and selecting hydrogen for the upper stage, uh, that has turned out to be a very good decision.

Lex Fridman 1:02:43 Mm.

Jeff Bezos 1:02:43 But if you change your mind (laughs) that would be a very, that would be a very big setback.

Lex Fridman 1:02:50 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:02:50 Do you see what I'm saying?

Lex Fridman 1:02:51 Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:02:52 So, that's the kind of decision you scrutinize very, very carefully. Other things just aren't like that. Most decisions are not that way. Most decisions should be made by single individuals, but they need... And, and, and done quickly. And the full understanding that you can always change your mind.

Lex Fridman 1:03:10 Yeah. One of the things I really liked, uh, perhaps it's not a two-way door decisions is, uh, "I disagree and commit" phrase. So, (laughs) don't s- (laughs) so if somebody brings up an idea to you, if it's a two-way door, you state that you don't understand enough to agree-

Jeff Bezos 1:03:29 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:03:29 ... but (laughs) y- y- you still back them.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:32 Well-

Lex Fridman 1:03:32 I mean, I'd love for you to explain that. I'm

Narrator 1:03:33 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:03:34 ... gonna start using that.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:34 Disagree and commit is a really important principle that saves a lot of arguing.

Lex Fridman 1:03:38 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:39 So, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:03:39 I wanna use that in my personal life too.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:41 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:03:41 I disagree, but commit.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:43 Like, it's very common in any endeavor in life.

Lex Fridman 1:03:47 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:47 In business, in any, you know, anybody where you have teammates. You have a teammate and the two of you disagree.

Lex Fridman 1:03:53 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:03:54 At some point you have to make a decision. And, you know, in companies, we tend to organize hierarchically, so there's this, uh, you know, whoever is the more senior person ultimately gets to make the decision, so ultimately the CEO gets to make that decision. And the CEO may not always make the decision that they agree with. So like, you know, well I would s- I would often... I would be the one who would disagree and commit. Some... One of my direct reports would very much wanna do it, do something in a particular way. I would think it was a bad idea. I would explain my point of view. They would say, "I, Jeff, I think you're wrong and here's why." And we would go back and forth. And I would often say, "You know what? I don't think you're right, um, but I'm gonna gamble with you. And, um, you're closer to the ground truth than I am. I've known you for 20 years (laughs) . You have great judgment. I, uh, I don't know that I'm right either, not really, not for sure. All these decisions are complicated. Let's do it your way." But at least then you've made a decision. And I, and I'm agreeing, uh, to commit to that decision. So I'm not gonna be second-guessing it. I'm not gonna be sniping at it. I'm not gonna be saying, "I told you so." I'm gonna try actively to help make sure it works. That's a really important teammate behavior. There's so many ways that dispute resolution is a really interesting thing in, on teams. And there are so many ways when two people disagree about something, even the... I'm s- I'm assuming like the case where everybody's well-intentioned, they just have a very different opinion about what the right decision is. And we have in our society and inside companies, we have a bunch of, um, mechanisms that we use to resolve these kinds of, uh, disputes. A lot of 'em are, I think, really bad. So, (laughs) an example of a really bad way of coming to agreement is compromise. So compromise, you know, like I... Here's, we're in a room here and I could say, "Lex, how tall do you think this ceiling is?" And you'd be like, "I don't know, Jeff, maybe 12 feet tall." And I would say, "Uh, I think it's 11 feet tall."

Lex Fridman 1:06:10 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:11 And then, um, we'd say, "You know what? Let's just call it 11 1/2 feet." (laughs) That's compromise.

Lex Fridman 1:06:17 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:18 Instead of the right thing to do is, you know, to get a tape measure or figure out some way of actually measuring. But think getting that tape measure and figuring how to get it to the top of the ceiling and all these things, that requires energy. Compromise, the advantage of compromise as a resolution mechanism is that it's low energy.

Lex Fridman 1:06:38 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:39 Um, but it doesn't lead to truth. And so, uh, in things like the height of the ceiling where truth is a knowable thing-

Lex Fridman 1:06:46 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:46 ... you shouldn't allow compromise to be used when you can know the truth.

Lex Fridman 1:06:50 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:51 Um, another really bad resolution mechanism (laughs) that happens all the time is just who's more stubborn? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:06:58 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:06:59 This is also... (laughs) So you have, let's say, two executives who disagree, and they just have a war of attrition.

Lex Fridman 1:07:05 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:07:05 And whichever one gets exhausted first-... capitulates to the other one. Again, you haven't arrived at truth, and this is very demoralizing. So, you know, this is where escalation, I- I try to ask people who, you know, on my team and say, "Never get to a point where you are resolving something by, you know, who gets exhausted first." Escalate that. "I'll help you make the decision." You know, let's, because that's so de-energizing, and it's such a terrible, lousy way to make a decision.

Lex Fridman 1:07:40 So you want to get to the resolution as quickly as possible because that ultimately leads to a high velocity of the sun.

Jeff Bezos 1:07:45 Yes, and you want to try to get as close to truth as possible.

Lex Fridman 1:07:48 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:07:48 So you want, like, you know, exhausting the other person is not truth-seeking.

Lex Fridman 1:07:54 Yes.

Jeff Bezos 1:07:54 And compromise is not truth-seeking. So, you know, it doesn't mean, now, and there are a lot of cases where no one knows the real truth, and that's where disagree and commit can come in. Um, but it's- it's, um, escalation is better than war of attrition. Escalate to, you know, to your boss, and say, "Hey, we can't agree on this. We like each other, we're respectful of each other, but we strongly disagree with each other. We need you to, you know, make a decision here so we can move forward." But decisiveness, moving forward quickly on- on decisions, as quickly as- as you responsibly can, is how you increase velocity. Most of what slows things down is- is taking too long to make decisions, at all skill levels. You know, so it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity. You know, Amazon has a million-and-a-half people, and the company is still fast. We're still decisive, we're still quick, and that's because the culture supports that.

Lex Fridman 1:08:53 At every scale in a dis- in a distributed way-

Jeff Bezos 1:08:55 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:08:56 ... trying to maximize the velocity of decisions.

Jeff Bezos 1:08:58 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 1:08:59 You've mentioned the lunar program. Let me ask you about that.

Jeff Bezos 1:09:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:03 Um, there's, uh, a lot going on there, and you haven't really talked about it much. So in addition to the Artemis program with NASA, uh, Blue is doing its own lander program. Can you describe it? The, there's a- there's a sexy picture on Instagram with- with one of them. Is it the MK1, I guess?

Jeff Bezos 1:09:20 Yeah, the Mark I. Uh, the- the picture is m- me with Bill Nelson, the-

Lex Fridman 1:09:24 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:09:25 ... NASA administrator.

Lex Fridman 1:09:26 Just to clarify, the lander is the sexy thing about the Instagram post.

Jeff Bezos 1:09:30 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:09:30 I really want to clarify that.

Jeff Bezos 1:09:31 I know it's not me. I know it's either you- the lander or Bill.

Lex Fridman 1:09:34 Okay. (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 1:09:36 Um, (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 1:09:36 I love Bill, but-

Jeff Bezos 1:09:37 Thank you for clarifying.

Lex Fridman 1:09:37 ... yeah, tha- okay.

Jeff Bezos 1:09:38 Um, the, uh, yes, the Mark I lander, um, is, uh, designed to take 3,000 kilograms to the surface of the moon in a cargo, expendable cargo. It's an expendable lander, lands on the moon, stays there, take 3,000 kilograms to the surface. It can be launched on a single New Glenn flight, which is very important. So it's a relatively simple architecture, just like the human landing system lander, the- they're called the Mark II. Mark I is also, uh, fueled with liquid hydrogen. And, uh, which is for- for high energy missions, like landing on the surface of the moon, the high specific impulse of hydrogen is a very big advantage. The disadvantage of hydrogen has always been that it's, uh, since it's such a deep cryogen, it's not storable. So it's constantly boiling off, and you're losing propellant, um, because it's boiling off. And so what we're doing as part of the l- of our lunar program is developing solar-powered cryocoolers that can actually make hydrogen a storable propellant for deep space. And that's a real game changer. Uh, it's a game changer for any high energy mission, so to the moon, but to the outer planets, to Mars, everywhere.

Lex Fridman 1:11:00 So the idea with Mark I, both Mark I and Mark II, is the New Glenn can, uh, carry it from the surface of Earth to the surface of the moon.

Jeff Bezos 1:11:12 Exactly. So the Mark I is expendable. The lunar- the lunar lander we're developing for NASA, the Mark II lander, that's part of, uh, the Artemis pro- they call it the Sustaining Lander Program. So that lander is designed to be reusable. It can land on the surface of the moon in a- in a single-stage configuration and then take off. So the whole, the, you know, the- if you look at the Apollo program, the lunar lander in Apollo was really two stages. It would land on the surface, and then it would leave the descent stage on the surface of the moon, and only the ascent stage would go back up into lunar orbit where it would rendezvous with the command module. Here, what we're doing is we have a single-stage lunar lander that carries down enough propellant so that it can bring the whole thing back up so that it can be reused over and over. And the point of doing that, of course, is to reduce cost so that you can make lunar missions more affordable over time. Which is, that's one of NASA's big objectives, because this time, the whole point of Artemis is go back to the moon, but this time to stay. So you know, back in the Apollo program, we went to the moon six times and then ended the program, and it really was too expensive to- to continue.

Lex Fridman 1:12:36 And so there's a few questions there, but one is, how do you stay on the moon? What- what ideas do you have about, uh-

Jeff Bezos 1:12:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:12:44 ... like a sustain- sustaining life where a few folks can stay there for prolonged periods of time?

Jeff Bezos 1:12:51 Well, um, one of the things we're working on is, um, using lunar resources, like lunar regolith, to manufacture commodities and even solar cells on the surface of the moon. We've already built a solar cell that is completely made from lunar regolith simulant, and this solar cell-... is only about 7%, uh, power efficient, so it's very inefficient compared to, you know, the more advanced solar cells that we make here on Earth. But if you can figure out how to make a practical solar cell factory that you can land on the surface of the moon, and then the raw material for those solar cells is simply lunar regolith, then you can just, uh, you know, continue to churn out solar cells on the surface of the moon, have lots of power on the surface of the moon. That will make it easier for people to live on the moon. Uh, similarly, we're working on extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. So lunar regolith, by weight, is- has a lot of oxygen in it. It's bound very tightly, you know, in- as oxides, with other elements. And so it- you have to separate the oxygen, which is very energy-intensive. So that also could work together with the, uh, solar cells. But if you can, uh... And then ultimately, we may be able to find practical quantities of ice, uh, in the permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon, and we know there is ice water, um, uh, in those, uh, or water ice, in those craters, and we know that we can break that down, uh, with electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you'd not only have oxygen, but you'd also have a very good, high, uh, efficiency propellant, uh, fuel in, in hydrogen. So there's a lot th- there's a lot we can do to make the moon more sustainable over time, but the very first step, the thing, the kind of gate that all of that has to go through, is we need to be able to land, uh, cargo and humans on the surface of the moon at an acceptable cost.

Lex Fridman 1:15:16 To fast-forward a little bit, is there any chance Jeff Bezos steps foot on the moon and on Mars, one or the other, or both?

Jeff Bezos 1:15:27 It's very unlikely. I think it's probably something that gets done by future generations-

Lex Fridman 1:15:33 All right.

Jeff Bezos 1:15:33 ... by the time it gets to me. I think in my lifetime, that's probably gonna be done by professional astronauts.

Lex Fridman 1:15:40 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:15:40 Sadly.

Lex Fridman 1:15:41 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:15:41 I would love to sign up for that mission. Um, so don't count me out yet, Lex.

Lex Fridman 1:15:46 (laughs)

Jeff Bezos 1:15:46 You know, gimme, gimme-

Lex Fridman 1:15:47 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:15:48 ... a fighting shot here, maybe.

Lex Fridman 1:15:50 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:15:50 But I think if we're, if we are, uh, placing, uh, reasonable bets on such a thing, in my lifetime, that will continue to be done by professional astronauts.

Lex Fridman 1:15:59 Yeah, so these are risky, difficult missions.

Jeff Bezos 1:16:02 And probably missions that require a lot of training. You know, you are going there for a very specific purpose to do something. We're gonna be able to do a lot on the moon too with automation. So, you know, in terms of setting up these factories and doing all that, we- we're sophisticated enough now with automation that we probably don't need humans to tend those factories and machines. Um, so it's- there's a lot that's gonna be done in both modes.

Lex Fridman 1:16:28 So, I have to ask the bigger picture question about the two companies pushing humanity forward out towards the stars, Blue Origin and SpaceX. Are you competitors? Collaborators? Which, and to what degree?

Jeff Bezos 1:16:44 Well, I would say, you know, just like the internet is big and there are lots of winners at all skill levels. I mean, there are half a dozen giant companies the- you know, the internet has made, but there are a bunch of medium-sized companies and a bunch of small companies, all successful, all with profit streams, all driving great customer experiences. Um, that's what we wanna see in space.

Lex Fridman 1:17:05 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:17:06 That kind of dynamism. And space is big. There's room for a bunch of winners, and it's gonna happen at all skill levels. And so, you know, SpaceX is gonna be successful for sure. I want Blue Origin to be successful, and I hope there are another, you know, five companies right behind us.

Lex Fridman 1:17:25 But, you know, I spoke to Elon a few times recently about you, about Blue Origin, and he was very positive about you as a person and very supportive of all the efforts you've been leading at Blue. What's your thoughts... You worked with a lot of leaders at Amazon, at Blue. What's your thoughts about Elon as a human being and a leader?

Jeff Bezos 1:17:46 Well, I don't really know Elon very well. Um, you know, I know his public persona, but I also know you can't know anyone by their public persona. Um, it's impossible. I mean, you may think you do, but I guarantee you don't. So I don't really know. You know Elon way better than I do, Lex. But, um, in- in terms of his... Judging by the results, he must be a very capable leader. Um, there's no way you could have, you know, Tesla and SpaceX without being a capable leader. It's impossible.

Lex Fridman 1:18:22 Yeah, I just... I- I hope you guys hang out sometimes, shake hands, and sort of, um, have a kind of friendship that would inspire just the entirety of humanity, 'cause you- what you're doing is, like, one of the big, grand challenges ahead for humanity.

Jeff Bezos 1:18:40 Well, I agree with you, and I think in a lot of these, um, endeavors, we're very like-minded.

Lex Fridman 1:18:45 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:18:46 So I think (laughs) , you know, I think... And I'm not saying we're identical, but I think we're very like-minded. And so I, you know, I- I- I love that idea.

Lex Fridman 1:18:56 All right, going back to, uh, sexy pictures on your Instagram. Uh, there's a video-

Jeff Bezos 1:19:00 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:00 ... of you from the early days of Amazon, um, giving a tour of your quote, "sort of offices." I think your dad is holding the camera.

Jeff Bezos 1:19:07 He is, yeah. I know, right? Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:19:09 (laughing)

Jeff Bezos 1:19:10 This is with the giant orange extension cord-

Lex Fridman 1:19:12 Yeah.

Jeff Bezos 1:19:12 ... and yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:12 And you're, like, explaining the- the genius of the extension cord-

Jeff Bezos 1:19:16 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:16 ... and how this is, this is a desk and the CRT monitor and sort of that's where the, that's where all the magic happens. I forget what your dad said, but this is, like, the- the (laughs) the center of it all. So, um, what was it like? What was going through your mind at that time? You left a good job.... in New York and took this leap. Were you excited? Were you scared? What was-

Jeff Bezos 1:19:37 So excited and scared, a-anxious, you know, thought the odds of success were low. Uh, told all of our early (laughs) investors that I thought there was a 30% chance of success, I me- by which I'd just been getting your money back, not like-

Lex Fridman 1:19:51 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:19:51 ... turning out what actually happened, because that's the truth. Every startup company is unlikely to work. It's helpful to be in reality about that, um, but that doesn't mean you can't be optimistic. So you kind of have to have this duality in your head. Like, you, on the one hand, you're, you know what the baseline statistics say about startup companies, and the other hand, you have to ignore all of that and just be 100% sure it's gonna work.

Lex Fridman 1:20:18 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:20:19 And you're doing both things at the same time. You're holding that contradiction in your head. But it was so, so exciting. I, I lo- uh, you know, every, from 1994 when, uh, the company was founded to 1995 when we opened our doors, all the way until today, it's, I find Amazon so exciting and that doesn't mean it's like full of pain, full of problems, f- you know (laughs) every, it's like there's so many things that need to be resolved and worked and made better and, and et cetera. But, but on balance, it's so fun. It's such a privilege. It's been such a joy. I feel so grateful that I've been part of that journey. Um, it's just been incredible.

Lex Fridman 1:21:04 So in some sense, you don't want a d- a single day of comfort. You've written about this many times. We'll talk about your writing, which, uh, I, I would highly recommend people read and just the letters to shareholders. Uh, so y- you wrote up, uh, explaining the idea of day one thinking. I think you first wrote about it in '97 letters to shareholders. Then you also, in a way, wrote about, sad to say, as y- your last letter to shareholders-

Jeff Bezos 1:21:32 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:21:32 ... as CEO, um, and you've said that, "Day two is stasis followed by irrelevance, (laughs) followed by excruciating painful decline-"

Jeff Bezos 1:21:44 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:21:44 "... followed by death. And that is why it's always day one."

Jeff Bezos 1:21:47 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:21:49 Um, can, can you explain this day one thing? Th- this is a really powerful way to describe the beginning and the journey of Amazon.

Jeff Bezos 1:21:56 It's, it's really a very simple and I think age-old idea about renewal and rebirth and, like, every day is day one. Every day, you are deciding what you're gonna do, and you are not trapped by what you were or who you were or any self-consistency. Self-consistency even can be a trap. And so day one thinking is kind of we start fresh every day, and we get to make new decisions every day about invention, about customers, about, uh, how we're going to operate, what our, even, even, even as deeply as what our principles are. We can go back to that. Turns out we don't change those very often, but we change them occasionally. And, um, when we work on programs at Amazon, we often, uh, make a list of tenets, and this, uh, th- the tenets are kind of, they're not principles, they're a little more tactical than principles, but it's kind of the, the main ideas that we want this program to embody, whatever those are. And one of the things that we do is we put, "These are the tenets for this program," and then in parentheses, we always put, "Unless you know a better way."

Lex Fridman 1:23:21 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Bezos 1:23:22 And that idea, unless you know a better way, is so important because you never want to get trapped by dogma. You never wanna get trapped by history. It doesn't mean you discard history or ignore it. There's so much value in what has worked in the past and, but you can't be blindly following what you've done, and that's the heart of day one, is you're always starting fresh.

Lex Fridman 1:23:51 And, uh, to the question of how to fend off day two, you said, "Such a question can't have a simple answer," as you're saying. "There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don't know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here's a starter pack (laughs) of essentials. Maybe others come to mind. For day one, defense, customer obsession, uh, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision-making." So we talked about high- velocity decision-making. That's more difficult than it sounds. Uh, so maybe you can pick one that stands out to you as you can comment on. Uh, eager adoption of external trends, high-velocity decision-making, skeptical view of proxies, how do you fight off day two?

Jeff Bezos 1:24:36 Well, you know, I'll talk about because I think it's the one that is maybe in some ways the hardest to understand, um, is the skeptical view of proxies. Um, one of the things that happens in business, probably anything that you're, where you're, you know, you have an ongoing program and something is, is underway for a number of years, is you develop certain things that you're managing to. Like, let's say the typical case would be a metric, and that metric isn't the real underlying thing. And so, uh, you know, maybe the metric is, um, efficiency metric around customer contacts per unit sold or something like... If you sell a million units, how many customer contacts do you get? Or how many returns do you get? And so on and so on. And so what happens is a little bit of a kind of inertia sets in.... where somebody a long time ago invented that metric, and they invented that metric, they decided, "We need to watch for, you know, customer returns per unit sold as an important metric." But they had a reason why they chose that metric, the person