Colonizing Space with Blue Origin’s Jake Mills

In this conversation, I sit down with Jake Mills, an engineer and astronaut trainer with Blue Origin. Jake's background as an engineer has been a fascinating journey involving working on fission powered spacecrafts to investigate water on the moons of Jupiter, to developing enabling technology for propulsion systems for NASA, Air Force, D.O.E., and D.O.D. across defense, commercial, aero, and space industries.

Jake helped developed the BE-4 Engine, the large booster engine powering the New Glenn and Vulcan Lauch vehicles. He set up and lead the turbo machinery group at Blue Origin and currently works directly with astronauts in training applications of Blue Origin's New Shepard Sub-Orbital Vehicle.

This was such an inspiring and deeply thought provoking episode about the future of humankind. We traverse many important topics such as how to responsibly balance the reality of space exploitation with space exploration. We discuss this from the vantage point of ethics, technological hurdles, space democratization, and geo-politics.

We also discuss the role of curiosity and exploration as intrinsic to human nature, as well as the influence of yoga and meditation on the perspectives that shape how we approach these big questions about the future of our species.

I was left feeling incredibly inspired and hopeful not just about what the promise of becoming an interplanetary species means for our human family beyond this planet but how that perspective alters the way we live on and with this planet. And...with each other. 

It was a privilege to speak with someone working on the front lines of these most pivotal issues of our time and it is an honor to give you a front row seat to the behind the scenes of the perspectives that are influencing space travel and healing the divide between where our current home is and what the future holds for us all.