Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos posted his first video on Instagram today, but it wasn’t about the proceeds from Prime Day: Rather, it was about the Blue Origin rocket factory that’s taking shape in Florida.
In his caption, Bezos said construction was “coming along nicely.” The factory is due for completion by early next year, and should be turning out hardware for orbital-class New Glenn rockets soon afterward.
Bezos set up his Blue Origin venture in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of spaceflight. The company is headquartered in Kent, Wash., but it has a suborbital rocket test facility in Texas and is planning a rocket engine factory in Alabama as well as the Florida factory and orbital launch site.
If all goes according to plan, Blue Origin could be sending passengers on suborbital space trips as early as next year, and launching payloads to Earth orbit (and to the moon?) by around 2020.
There’s way more to the Instagram posting than just showing off the Florida construction site. The flyover was shot from the air – which makes you wonder whether Bezos was testing out one of the drones that Amazon is developing for package delivery.
The video zooms all the way in to Bezos lounging in a chair on the factory’s roof, holding a sign that could well become iconic. (I can already imagine the mashed-up memes that picture will generate.)
The icing on the cake is Bezos’ Instagram avatar. Who knew the famously smooth-pated billionaire ever had so much hair? Check it out:
