Burnt Orange Report

What the heck else are you going to do in Van Horn?

By Jim Dallas

Many people have gone totally mad while driving around in West Texas. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appears to have joined the club, according to today's Houston Chronicle:

VAN HORN — Even skeptical locals, who've become wary over the years of city slickers with big ideas for their town, perked up when Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos made his pitch — a spaceport for commercial travel into space.

Bezos flew into this West Texas town a few weeks ago to tell key leaders how he planned to use his newly acquired 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land. He also gave his only interview so far on the spaceport to the Van Horn Advocate, the weekly newspaper Larry Simpson runs from the back of his Radio Shack store.

"He walked in and said: 'Hi, I'm Jeff Bezos,' and sat down right in that chair there," Simpson said, pointing to spot in his small cluttered office.

Over the next 30 to 40 minutes, Simpson said Bezos told him the goal of his venture — known as Blue Origin — was to send a spaceship into orbit that launches and lands vertically, like a rocket.

"He told me their first spacecraft is going to carry three people up to the edge of space and back," Simpson said. "But ultimately, his thing is space colonization."

All this reminds me that I still have undeveloped photos from our trip to New Mexico last fall.

For what it's worth, here's the original Advocate story. And the Blue Origin web site.