Jeff Bezos
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and one of his Blue Origin rockets. (Blue Origin Photo)

Whatever critters live on the distant planets where Jeff Bezos eventually lands, here’s a word of advice: run!

The Amazon CEO and Blue Origin founder nibbled on some interesting fare over the weekend when he attended The Explorers Club annual dinner in New York City to accept the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award.

Bezos was photographed looking like he was getting ready to take a bite of iguana. According to Gizmodo, invasive species were on the menu as a way of highlighting how our diets could be more sustainable. Master chefs reportedly cooked up tarantula, cockroach and roasted iguana.

As for the other portion of the event, Bezos talked about the cost of getting to space and how he plans to finance it. Some of his comments were captured in video posted to The Explorers Club Instagram feed, below. Bloomberg reported on other details.

“The problem with space is it’s hard to get to. The price of admission is so high,” Bezos said. “And, we need to get there. I’ve asked myself this my entire life: Why would I want to do this? I realize I just want to do it because I’m passionate about it. It’s something that’s in me. But I do think there are super important reasons why we as a civilization, as humans need to go into space. Some of it is just as fundamental as, what would we be without a place to explore?”

@jeffbezos on #SpaceExploration at #ECAD2018 #JeffBezos

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The billionaire Bezos has a net worth of $112 billion according to Forbes’ richest people list a week ago.

“I’m in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the solar system,” he said Saturday night.

Edith Widder, a distinguished deep sea explorer, received a Citation of Merit at the event. Bloomberg reported that Widder said she’d rather see Bezos’s money go into ocean exploration than space.

Bezos and his team received the club’s Citation of Merit in 2014 for recovering the F-1 engines of the Saturn V rocket that sent Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.

“We have sent a lot of probes to every planet in this solar system,” Bezos said. “Believe me, this is the best one. The world that we live on is an absolute gem.”

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