YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Bezos

lines on the record: 167
first: 2023-12-14
most recent: 2023-12-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And take you back in time 10,000 years and you're in a small village. If you go along to get along, you can survive. You can procreate. If you're the village truth teller, you might get clubbed to death in the middle of the night. Truths are often they don't want to be heard because important truths can be uncomfortable. They can be awkward. They can be exhausting.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Million dollar question. So this is if I generalize what you're asking you're talking in general about truth telling. And we humans are not really truth-seeking animals. We are social animals.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and by the way, you do need metrics, you do. You know, you can't ignore them. They want them, but you just have to be constantly on guard. This is a way to slip into day two thinking. Be to manage your business to metrics that you don't really understand and you're not really sure why they were invented in the first place and you're not sure they're still as relevant as they used to be.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Putting energy into and following and improving and scrutinizing only insomuch as it actually affects customer happiness. And so you've got to constantly be on guard. And it's very, very common. This is a nuanced problem. It's very common, especially in large companies, that they are managing to metrics that they don't really understand. They don't really know why they exist. And the world may have shifted out from under them a little. And the metrics are no longer as relevant as they were when somebody ten years earlier invented the metric.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Proxy for truth, I guess. Proxy for truth, the proxy for custard, let's say in this case, it's a proxy for customer happiness. But that metric is not actually customer happiness, it's a proxy for customer happiness. The person who invented the metric understood that connection. Five years later, A kind of inertia can set in, and you forget. The truth behind why you were watching that metric in the first place. And the world shifts a little. And now that proxy isn't as valuable as it used to be, or it's missing something. And you have to be on alert for that. You have to know, okay, this is, I don't really care about this metric. I care about customer happiness. And this metric is worth...”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where somebody a long time ago invented that metric and they invented that metric, they decided we need to watch for customer returns per unit sold as an important metric. But they had a reason why they chose that metric, the person who invented that metric and decided it was worth watching. And then fast forward five years. That metric is the proxy.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'll talk about because I think it's the one that is maybe in some ways the hardest to understand. Is the skeptical view of proxies One of the things that happens in business, probably anything that you have an ongoing program and something 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, you know, maybe the metric is 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not principles, they're a little more tactical than principles, but it's kind of 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 in parentheses, we always put, unless you know a better way. And that idea, unless you know a better way, Is so important because you never want to get trapped by dogma. You never want to 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, but you can't be blindly following what you've done. And that's the heart of day one. You're always starting fresh.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really a very simple and I think Every day you're deciding what you're going to do. And you Are not trapped by what you were or who you were, or you need 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 how we're going to operate, what are 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 when we work on Programs that Amazon, we often make a list of tenants. The tenants are kind of”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 you know it's like there's so many things that need to be resolved and worked and made better and and etc 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Excited and scared anxious, you know, thought the odds of success were low, told all of our early investors that I thought there was a 30% chance of success, by which I'd just been getting your money back, not what actually happened, because that's the truth. Every startup company is unlikely to work. It's helpful to be in reality about that, but that doesn't mean you can't be optimistic. So you kind of have to have this duality in your head. Like on the one hand, you know what the baseline statistics say about startup companies. On the other hand, you have to ignore all of that and just be 100% sure it's going to work. And you're doing both things at the same time. You're holding that contradiction in your head. But it was so exciting. I love, you know, from 1994 when the company was founded.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I agree with you. And I think in a lot of endeavors, we're very like-minded. So, I think I'm not saying we're identical, but I think we're very like-minded. And so I love that idea.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't really know Elon very well. I know his public persona, but I also know you can't know anyone by their public persona. 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 in terms of his judging by the results, he must be a very capable leader. There's no way you could have Tesla and SpaceX without being a capable leader. It's impossible.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 that, you know, the internet has made, but they're a bunch of medium-sized companies and a bunch of small companies all successful, all with profit streams, all driving great customer experiences. That's what we want to see in space. That kind of dynamism. And space is big. There's room for a bunch of winners and that's going to happen at all skill levels. And so SpaceX is going to be successful for sure. I want Blue Origin to be successful. And I hope there are another five companies right behind us.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And probably missions that require a lot of training. You are going there for a very specific purpose to do something. We're going to 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 were sophisticated enough now with automation that we probably don't need humans to tend those factories and machines. There's a lot that's going to be done in both modes.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think if we are placing reasonable bets on such a thing in my lifetime, that will continue to be done by professional astronauts. Yeah.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very unlikely, I think it's probably something that gets done by future generations by the time it gets to me. I think in my lifetime, that's probably going to be done by professional astronauts. Sadly, I would love to sign up for that mission. So don't count me out yet, Lex. Give me a finding shot here. Maybe.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we know there is ice water or water ice in those craters. And we know that we can break that down with electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you'd not only have oxygen, but you'd also have a very good high efficiency propellant fuel in hydrogen. So there's a lot we can do to make the moon more sustainable over time. But the very first step, the kind of gate that all of that has to go through is we need to be able to land cargo and humans on the surface of the moon at an acceptable cost.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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. Similarly, we're working on extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. So lunar regolith by weight has a lot of oxygen in it. It's bound very tightly as oxides with other elements. And so you have to separate the oxygen, which is very energy intensive. So that also could work together with the solar cells. But then ultimately, we may be able to find practical quantities of ice. In the permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the things we're working on is 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% power efficient. So it's very inefficient compared to 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”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of doing that, of course, is to reduce cost so that you can make lunar missions more affordable over time, which is 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 continue.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So the Mark I is expendable. The lunar lander we're developing for NASA, the Mark II lander, that's part of the Artemis program. They call it the sustaining lander program. So that lander is designed to reusable. It can land on the surface of the moon in a single stage configuration and then take off. So the whole, if you look at the Apollo program, the lunar lander and 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And which is 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 since it's such a deep cryogen, it's not storable. So it's constantly boiling off and you're losing propellant because it's boiling off. And so what we're doing as part 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. It's a game changer for any high energy mission. So to the moon, but to the outer planets, to Mars everywhere.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the Mark I lander is designed to take 3,000 kilograms to the surface of the moon in a cargo, expendable cargo. It's expendable lander, lands on the moon, stays there, take 3,000 kilograms to the surface. It can be launched on a single new glen flight, which is very important. So it's a relatively simple architecture, just like the human landing system lander called the Mark II. Mark I also fueled with liquid hydrogen.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And compromise is not truth seeking. So it doesn't mean, and there are a lot of cases where no one knows the real truth, and that's where disagreeing and commit can come in. But it's escalation is better than war of attrition. Escalate 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 decisions as quickly as you responsibly can is how you increase velocity. Most of what slows things down is taking too long to make decisions at all skill levels. So it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity. Amazon has a million and a half people and the company is still fast. We're still decisive. We're still”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and you want to try to get as close to truth as possible So, you want, like, you know, exhausting the other person is not truth seeking.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they just have a war of attrition. 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 try to ask people who, you know, on my team, I 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. Because that's so de-energizing and such a terrible, lousy way to make a decision.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead of the right thing to do is to get a tape measure or figure out some way of actually measuring, but getting that tape measure and figure out 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. But it doesn't lead to truth. And so in things like the height of this feeling where truth is a noble thing, you shouldn't allow compromise to be used when you can know the truth. Another really bad resolution mechanism that happens all the time is just who's more stubborn. This is also.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, I think it's 11 feet tall. And then we'd say, you know what? Let's just call it 11 and a half feet. That's compromised”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That decision, so I'm not going to be second guessing it. I'm not going to be sniping at it. I'm not going to be saying, I told you so. I'm going to 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 on Teams. And there are so many ways when two people disagree about something. I'm assuming the case where everybody is 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 mechanisms that we use to resolve these kinds of disputes. A lot of them are, I think, really bad. So an example of a really bad way of coming to agreement is compromise. So compromise, you know, here's”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the CEO may not always make the decision that they agree with. So, I would say I would often, I would be the one who would disagree and commit. One of my draft reports would very much want to 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, Jeff, I think you're wrong. And here's why. And we would go back and forth. I would often say, you know what? I don't think you're right, but I'm going to gamble with you. And you're closer to the ground truth than I am. I've known you for 20 years. You have great judgment. 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'm agreeing to commit.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Commit, like it's very common in any endeavor in life, in business, in any, you know, anybody where you have teammates, you have a teammate and the two of you disagree. At some point, you have to make a decision. And in companies, we tend to organize hierarchically. So whoever's the more senior person ultimately gets to make the decision. So ultimately the CEO gets to make that decision.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a bunch of decisions like that that are changing the decision is going to 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 going to, once you make them, it gets really hard, choosing which propellants to use in a vehicle, selecting LNG for the booster stage and selecting hydrogen for the upper stage, that has turned out to be a very good decision. But if you changed your mind, That would be a very big setback. Do you see what I was saying? Yeah. 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 done quickly in the full understanding that you can always change your mind.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Including the lightweight ones, 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. And one way door decisions are the ones that are the irreversible ones. Those are the ones that should be elevated up to the seniormost executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to be able to reverse this one easily. Maybe you can reverse it, it's going to be very costly and very time consuming. We really have to get this one right from the beginning. And 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, you spend a little time there. It turns out to be the wrong decision. 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. And those decisions have to be made very deliberately, very carefully. If you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that. So, you know, when I was CEO of Amazon, I often found myself in the position of being the chief slowdown officer because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision. And it's okay. I can think of three more ways to analyze that. So let's go do that because we are.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being bold on those things. That's what, and having the right culture that supports that, you need people to be ambitious, technically ambitious. 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. Changing your mind, I talk about one-way doors and two-way doors. Most decisions are two-way doors.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does apply. I'm leading this directly. We are going to become the world's most decisive company across any industry. And so, you know, at Amazon, ever since the beginning, I said we're going to become the world's most customer obsessed company. And no matter the industry, like people, one day people are going to come to Amazon from the health care industry and want to know, how did you guys, how are you so customer obsessed? How do you not just pay lip service to that, but actually do that? And from all different industries should come want to study us to see how we accomplish that. And the analogous thing at Blue Origin and will help us move faster is we're going to become the world's most decisive company. We're going to get really good at taking”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blurzen needs to be much faster, and it's one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago. I wanted to come in and 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 if I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company, it's going to get my full attention. And I really, it's just how I think about things. It was very important to me. I felt I had an obligation to all the stakeholders at Amazon to do that. And so having, you know, turned the CEO. I was still the executive chair there, but I turned the CEO role over. And the reason, the primary reason I did that is so that I could spend time on Lorigen adding some, you know, energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster. And we're going to.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I think for, you know, if you're doing, there are human activities where we tolerate more risk. If you're saving somebody's life, if you are engaging in real exploration, these are things where I personally think we would accept more risk, in part because you have to.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's automated The escape system is visualizing what is completely automated. Automated is better because it can react so much faster.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I know the vehicle very well. I know the people who designed it. I have great trust in them and in the engineering that we did. And I thought to myself, look, if I am not ready to go, then I wouldn't want anyone to go. A tourism vehicle has to be designed, in my view, to have to be as safe as one can make it. You can't make it perfectly safe. It's impossible. But you have to people will do things. People take risk. They climb mountains. They skydive. 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. Inside, and maybe others weren't just coughed. They didn't know as much about it as I did.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we have on New Shepard an unusual 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 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, cost really matters on these things. So we figured out how to have the escape system be a reusable in the event that it's not used. You can reuse it 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the only way to improve safety is to have an escape system. And historically, rockets, human-rated rockets, have had escape systems. Only the space shuttle did not. But Apollo had one, all of the previous Gemini, et cetera. They all had escape systems.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 booster is this safe and reliable as we can make it, but 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I decided that, first of all, I knew the vehicle extremely well. I know the team who built it. I know the vehicle. I'm very comfortable with 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.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feels so natural to be in Zurji. It was really interesting. And then what people talk about, the overview effect and seeing Earth from space. I had that feeling very powerfully. I think everyone did. You see how fragile the earth is. If you're not an environmentalist, it will make you one. The great Jim Lovell quote, 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 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 and it's earth.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The ascent, the floating and zero gravity. I'll tell you something very interesting. Zero gravity feels very natural. I don't know if it's because it's like return to the womb. You just confirmed your name.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brother and I are getting ready to go to the launch site, and Lauren is going to take us there in her helicopter, and we're getting ready to leave. And we go outside outside the ranch house there in West Texas where the launch facility is. And all of our family, my kids and my brother's kids and our parents and 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. 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 see it was almost like a 10-year-old memorial service or something like you could feel how loved you were in that moment. And it was really amazing.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's like, both of you, it was an incredible experience. And we were laughing inside the capsule and, you know, we're not nervous. The people on the ground were very nervous for us. It was actually one of the most emotionally powerful parts of the experience was not happened even before the flight at 4.30 in the morning.”
2023-12-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #405 – Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source