Jeff Bezos: ‘We Must Go Back to the Moon, and This Time to Stay’ - WSJ

For a deep-dive in this domain, see The Space Barons (also see a NYT review by Walter Isaacson)

"Responding to questions about his commitment to pursue human space travel regardless of federal support, Amazon’s CEO joked that either “other people will take over the vision, or I will run out of money.”

But he ended the talk on a more serious note by reiterating his view that moon exploration is an essential step toward transporting humans to Mars and allowing them to create habitats on the Red Planet. Such gradual efforts are the only way to avoid a repeat of earlier policy mistakes, he said, which saw the Apollo astronauts land on the moon but then morphed into five decades without any more human missions there.

“I don’t like to skip steps,” he said, explaining that trying to take people directly to Mars would be futile. “There would be a ticker-tape parade and then 50 years of nothing.”"

Jeff Bezos: ‘We Must Go Back to the Moon, and This Time to Stay’ - WSJ