More than 6,000 people have signed a petition calling for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to be DENIED re-entry to Earth after he launches into space next month with Blue Origin
- Jeff Bezos is scheduled to travel to space with Blue Origin on July 20 from Texas
- This will be the first crewed flight of the Blue Origin New Shepherd spaceship
- The new petition jokingly compares Bezos to Superman villain Lex Luthor
- It suggests that Bezos is ‘taking over the world’ and should be stopped returning
A petition has had over 6,000 signatures suggesting Amazon founder Jeff Bezos should be denied re-entry to Earth when he launches for space next month.
The tongue-in-cheek petition compares Bezos, who is set to launch to the edge of space on his Blue Origin rocket on July 20, to superman villain Lex Luthor.
He will fly with his brother and two others, including the winner of a £20 million pound auction, on the first crewed flight of the autonomous New Shepherd rocket.
Titled ‘Petition To Not Allow Jeff Bezos Re-Entry To Earth,’ the change.org page urges people to sign to ‘keep him out, adding ‘The fate of humanity is in your hands.’
The petition was launched five days ago and is addressed to Blue Origin, the rocket launch firm founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000 and operator of the upcoming flight.
It has been signed by over 6,800 people at the time of writing but has new signatures coming in every few minutes, with some suggesting he ‘takes Elon [Musk]’ with him.
A petition has had over 6,000 signatures suggesting Amazon founder Jeff Bezos should be denied re-entry to Earth when he launches for space next month
BLUE ORIGIN: THE SPACE LAUNCH FIRM FOUNDED BY JEFF BEZOS
Amazon founder and outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos entered the space sector in 2000, two years before SpaceX was formed by Elon Musk.
Based in Kent, Washington, it originally focused on sub-orbital spaceflight services, building cheaper, more reliable and reusable launch vehicles.
They are gradually moving from suborbital to orbital flight in an incremental way and will launch humans to space on July 20.
Bezos will be on that first crewed flight along with his brother Mark, the winner of an auction, and three members of Blue Origin staff.
The firm currently has two launch vehicles, the suborbital New Shepherd, named for the first American in space, Alan Shepherd, and New Glenn, named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Bezos has announced they are also working on New Armstrong, after the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, although no details have been revealed.
‘Jeff Bezos is actually Lex Luthor, disguised as the supposed owner of a super successful online retail store,’ the petition description says, adding he is ‘actually an evil overlord hellbent on global domination.’
‘He’s also in bed with the flat earth deniers,’ the petition jokingly claims, adding ‘it’s the only way they’ll allow him to leave the atmosphere.’
The creator of the petition, Jose Ortiz, suggested the upcoming spaceflight was a perfect opportunity to rid the world of the man he describes as an ‘evil overlord’ and urges Blue Origin to stop the rocket returning to Earth.
He also jokingly says governments stand by and watch as he takes over the world.
Ortiz pokes fun at Bezos, saying he is in cahoots with ‘the Epsteins and the Knights Templar,’ as well as the flat Earth deniers.
He says keeping him in space is essential before this Bezos-led cabal ‘enable the 5G microchips and perform a mass takeover’.
Bezos and the three other space tourists will venture up to 62 miles above the Earth’s surface on the New Shepherd rocket.
This is the point believed to be the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, although NASA recognises 50 miles above the surface as the edge of space.
They will launch on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, flying at more than 2,000 mph to get into space.
After its moments in orbit, providing a few minutes of weightlessness, the innovative vehicle is supposed to float back on parachutes and land upright.
New Shepard – named after first American in space Alan Shepard – flies by automation, is 59ft high, and has room for up to six passengers.
Bezos, who has built a fortune of some £130bn after spotting the potential for online shopping 30 years ago and starting Amazon as an internet bookseller, is stepping back from the top of the firm early next month.
The richest man in the modern world, Bezos has come under fire for alleged anti-competitive practices through Amazon.
He has also come under fire for controversial labour practices at Amazon, including low-wages, constant surveillance of employees and over work.
He will fly with his brother and two others, including the winner of a £20 million pound auction, on the first crewed flight of the autonomous New Shepherd rocket
He will fly with his brother and two others, including the winner of a £20 million pound auction, on the first crewed flight of the autonomous New Shepherd spacecraft (artist illustration)
His Blue Origin project has so far completed 15 flights, but all of them have been unmanned. He has been putting $1bn a year into it out of his spare change.
As a result of his planned personal trip Bezos is now the leader in the space race which has developed between himself and rival technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, the similarly fabulously rich boss of Tesla electric cars.
In an Instagram post, the billionaire said he had dreamed of travelling to space ever since he was five years old, adding: ‘I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend.’
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE: HOW BRANSON, MUSK AND BEZOS ARE VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin’s space capsule
Dubbed the ‘NewSpace’ set, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk all say they were inspired by the first moon landing in 1969, when the US beat the Soviet Union in the space race, and there is no doubt how much it would mean to each of them to win the ‘new space race’.
Amazon founder Bezos looks set to be the first of the three to fly to space, having announced plans to launch aboard his space company Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft on July 20.
The billionaire mogul will travel with his younger brother Mark, a former advertising executive and volunteer firefighter, and the winner of Saturday’s multi-million pound auction.
However, a report has suggested Branson might beat him to it, by making a suborbital flight two weeks before Bezos and his brother. The suggestion is the Virgin Galactic founder would travel on his VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane on the July 4 weekend.
Although SpaceX and Tesla founder Musk has said he wants to go into space, and even ‘die on Mars’, he has not said when he might blast into orbit.
SpaceX appears to be leading the way in the broader billionaire space race with numerous launches carrying NASA equipment to the ISS and partnerships to send tourists to space by 2021.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away, with Musk’s own red Tesla roadster attached.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
NASA has already selected two astronauts who will be on-board the first manned Dragon mission.
SpaceX has also started sending batches of 60 satellites into space to help form its Starlink network.
Musk hopes this will provide an interconnected web of satellites around Earth which will beam down free internet to people worldwide.
Branson and Virgin Galactic are taking a different approach to conquering space. It has repeatedly, and successfully, conducted test flights of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity space plane.
The first took place in December 2018 and the latest on May 22, with the flight accelerating to more than 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
More than 600 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin’s space trips.
Branson has previously said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows – one to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
It climbs to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier craft, White Knight II, once it has passed the 50-mile mark.
Passengers become ‘astronauts’ when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spaceship will then make a suborbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 1.5 hours.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable ‘New Shepard’ booster rocket.
Bezos is one of the richest men in the world and Blue Origin has successfully flown the New Shepard rocket 15 times.
At its peak, the capsule reached 65 miles (104 kilometres), just above the official threshold for space and landed vertically seven minutes after liftoff.
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