WASHINGTON — Alexa, take me to the moon.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket venture, will be launching a manned mission to the moon, the Amazon CEO announced Thursday. It would be the first commercial moon landing ever.

"This vehicle is going to the moon," Bezos said as he unveiled the much-anticipated plans in the nation's capital. The project's lander will be known as Blue Moon, said Bezos, who is aiming for a 2024 moonshot.

Bezos said establishing a manufacturing base on the moon is a good idea since it has such lower gravity than Earth. "We were given a gift – this nearby body called the moon."

Getting resources from the moon "takes 24 times less energy to get it off the surface compared to the Earth."

Only three nations have successfully landed on the moon: U.S., Russia and China.

The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on July 20, 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening between 1976 and 2013.

At the presentation, Bezos showed off fanciful images and photos of massive space colonies where millions of people could live in seemingly idyllic conditions. The colonies would not be on other planets or the moon but would be floating or orbiting in space.



He said the weather on the colonies could be set to be like Maui all the time.



"It’s time to go back to the moon, and this time to stay," Bezos said.

Thursday's announcement comes amid renewed interest in moon landings. The Trump Administration said last week that Americans should put new boot prints on the moon within five years.

Calling on NASA to achieve that goal “by any means necessary,” Vice President Mike Pence sought to unveil an inspiring exploration vision and also put current NASA programs on notice that their slow progress is unacceptable.

“If NASA is not currently capable of landing Americans on the moon in five years, we need to change the organization, not the mission,” he told the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama.

Previous plans aimed to plant another U.S. flag on the moon by 2028, after spending several years visiting a small space station called the Gateway in orbit around Earth’s closest natural satellite.

Pence’s more ambitious direction came two weeks after the administration requested a slight cut to NASA’s current $21.5 billion budget, raising obvious questions about how the moon landing program can be accelerated without an infusion of money.

Contributing: Emre Kelly and James Dean, Florida Today





