Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin Space Company More Important Than Amazon

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos said this week his work at Amazon is not the most important thing he's doing.

Bezos, who Forbes ranks as the richest person in the world with a net worth of nearly $160 billion, spoke at a Washington, D.C. event earlier this week about his space company, Blue Origin.

"It's the most important work I'm doing," Bezos said of Blue Origin, according to CNBC. "I think Blue Origin is incredibly important."

Bezos said his goal is to help inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to open space-related businesses.

"Two kids in their dorm room created Facebook, which has a half-trillion-dollar market cap. It's a giant company," Bezos said. "Two kids in their dorm room today can't do anything big in space. It's not practical. The price of admission is just too high.

"If you can get that heavy-lifting done in a good way — a real operable, reusable launch vehicle — you'll set the next generation up to be space entrepreneurs."

Bezos is hopeful that he can send humans into space in the coming years, at a cost of $200,000 to $300,000 per ticket on the launch vehicle his company is developing.

Blue Origin has ramped up its effort by hiring hundreds of engineers over the last three years as it strives to have a total workforce of around 3,000 by 2021.

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