Forbes, a renowned international magazine, covers a recent Red Planet Live podcast interview, hosted by Ashton Connaughton (Zeth), featuring Dr. Kris Zacny, VP of Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin Company, as he discusses plans for human and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars.
By Kevin Holden Platt, Forbes, 01.26.25
One of the globe’s top designers of space robots says a new “Golden Age of Space Exploration” – spearheaded by the world’s twin Titans of spaceflight – will speed up astronauts joining robotic scouts in trekking around the Moon and Mars.
Gigantic new rockets now being tested by spacecraft makers Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – the planet’s leading hyper-billionaires – are setting the stage for human explorers to sojourn across an expanding realm of off-world outposts, says Dr. Kris Zacny, Director of the Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics.
During a virtual roundtable with journalists and space aficionados staged by the Mars Society, Dr. Zacny, who holds a doctorate in geotechnical engineering, with a focus on extraterrestrial drilling and mining, from the University of California Berkeley, sketched out his predictions for the new space epoch being opened by the titanic spacecraft now waiting in the wings.
“Folks who love space are the luckiest people on Earth,” Zacny mused during the meetup, hosted by the Mars Society’s Ashton Zeth.
“We have two of the wealthiest guys in the world prepared to spend their own money to go to space and change how we explore space and make space habitable,” Zacny says.
“They have a combined wealth of 500 billion dollars – half a trillion dollars – and this is their vision.”
“Jeff [Bezos] and Elon [Musk] are prepared … to change humanity forever.”
By designing colossal boosters that are rapidly reusable, and could power interplanetary flights ahead, these two Promethean rivals of the NewSpace sector, with their contest to dominate the celestial sphere, could collectively propel expanding waves of spacefarers into the heavens.
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