Bezos was born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico as Jeffrey Jorgensen. His mother was a teenager when his was born, the daughter of a wealthy Texas family. His Father divorced her a year after he was born and she married a hard working Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos (an engineer for Exxon) who adopted him.
Bezos went to Princeton where he obtained a BS (with honors) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He worked a few years for IT departments at Wall Street banks and investment firms before moving to Seattle and forming Amazon in 1994. As of March 2015, Bezos's personal wealth is estimated to be US$ 50 billion, due in part to a recent spike in Amazon's stock price, ranking him 15th on the Forbes list of billionaires.
Portfolio.com, has described him as a notorious micromanager: "an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases."
On August 15, 2015 the New York Times wrote a scathing article "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" about Amazon's business practices. It described working for Bezos and Amazon in the offices as a grueling and inhumane experience with many employees regularly being terminated or quitting. Bezos responded by claiming it doesn't represent the company he leads and challenged its depiction as "a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard"
He was named World's Worst Boss by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), at their World Congress, in May 2014. In making the award Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC, said "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the American corporate model..."
A series of articles in the Morning Call newspaper described working for Bezos and Amazon in the warehouses as grueling and inhumane.
Bezos formed his Blue Origin Spaceship Company in 2000, always keeping whatever they do under a deep cloud of secrecy. After 15 years their biggest known success was the launching of their New Shepard suborbital space vehicle one time.
This April, New Shepard went to 93,500 meters (307,000 feet) and fell back to earth. While the test itself was deemed a success and the capsule was correctly recovered via parachute landing, the booster stage crashed because hydraulic pressure was lost during the descent.
For comparison, SpaceX (which Elon Musk formed in 2002) has had 18 successful ORBITAL flights including six cargo deliveries to the international space station. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 v1.1 generates 1.3 million pounds of thrust at liftoff while New Shepard only generated about 110,000 pounds of thrust.
The Blue Origin New Shepard is not only severely under
powered, it also looks suspiciously like a penis (Sigmund Freud might have had
a thought about this if he were still around).
Bezos’ lack of results in the space arena might be
forgivable or at least cast in the same light as other under-achievers like Virgin
Galactic’s Richard Branson or Mars One’s Bas Lansdorp if it weren’t for the
fact that he has actually tried to screw another new space entrepreneur,
apparently (from the appearance of his rocket) out of penis envy.
The Amazon Billionaire has made it clear that if he can’t
be atop the New Space industry by succeeding, then he is willing to get to the
top of the heap by dragging down the leader: SpaceX.
His first attack
came when SpaceX decided to lease the old Apollo/Space Shuttle launch pad,
LC-39A. When it became obvious that the
award was going to SpaceX, Blue Origin appealed, claiming that they would have
a human rated rocket to launch from it within five years. The GAO ruled against Blue Origin. Elon Musk injected a bit of memorable humor
into the feud stating "If
they do somehow show up in the next 5 years with a vehicle qualified to NASA's
human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad
39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs. Frankly, I think we are more likely to
discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct."
He tried a second
time when SpaceX announced its intention to land their Falcon 9 first stage
booster on a barge. He produced a patent
owned by Blue Origin that claimed a system for doing just that. The problem was that the patent was much too
vague. While it described landing on a
barge it didn’t actually go into any detail on how to do it. The claim was thrown out of court.
Earlier this year
Bezos announced at a press conference with United Launch Alliance (ULA) that he
is going to use his new engine, the BE-4, to replace the Russian RD-180 engines
that ULA can no longer use. This seemed
like a match made in heaven for Bezos, giving the Lockheed – Boeing partnership
the engine they desperately need and giving them a chance to compete against
the low price juggernaut that is SpaceX.
But not so fast. In the last week
there have been rumblings of an imminent deal with Aerojet Rocketdyne, an old
space manufacturer of rocket engines to buy ULA.
If this deal goes
through there is no way their rockets will be using Blue Origin rocket engines. Apparently someone at ULA was not very
impressed with Bezos’ ability to deliver.
This appears to be a desperation move on the part of ULA to keep their
rockets flying.
This week Bezos’
announced big plans to build rockets in Titusville, Florida next to the Kennedy
Space Center and to lease the pad next to SpaceX out on the cape. His claim is that they would be building
rockets there to launch at KSC “within ten years”.
Given the apparent
experience of Amazon employees, I wouldn’t want to work there. Given the track record of Blue Origin, they
have already had 15 years and done almost nothing. I don’t have much faith that we will see anything
significant launch there in the next ten years. But who knows? Perhaps Dr. Evil will surprise us.
