Jeff Bezos Amazon CEO Space Venture Takes ‘A Giant Leap For Mankind’, Making BE-4 Liquid Rocket Engines For NASA.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Blue Origin, his spaceflight company along with United Launch Alliance, a launch provider, announced their collaborative effort on a rocket engine, BE-4 liquid rocket engine to be used by ULA’s future launches.

In a press conference where Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos discussed other Blue Origin projects such as manufacturing of reusable transport vehicles to orbit Planet Earth, which would save millions in space travel: “The timeline for that is late this decade,” he said. “We continue on that path.” He quoted the company’s motto in Latin, which he said translates to, “step by step ferociously.”

Here’s a video of the joint venture announcement earlier this week:

Source: Y ouTube

NASA has discontinued its space shuttle program since 2011 and relies on Russian rockets to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station. By 2017, NASA expects to launch its own rockets from Cape Canaveral.

Michael Lopez-Alegria, Washington’s president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation told MarketWatch, “It’s a giant leap, to quote Neil Armstrong,” adding, “NASA is saying 2017, and that might be a bit aggressive, but if they get the proper funding from Congress, they could do it.”

Bezos was passionate about making space travel affordable to everyone since he was five and he has been working toward that goal at Blue Origin.

“You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you,” the 50-year-old Bezos told reporters at the National Press Club. “I watched Neil Armstrong step on to the surface of the moon. I guess it imprinted me. So for whatever reason, I have always been interested in space and space vehicles,” said Bezos in a report by MarketWatch.