The Hindsight Times

Blue Origin, Bezos's private space venture, announced it would 'pause' human spaceflights for at least two years to focus on lunar landing capabilities. Contemporary observers saw this as a minor corporate restructuring. They could not have foreseen that this pivot would establish the foundation infrastructure that made the Great Sorting of 2037 possible.

'The billionaire simply decided moon bases were more profitable than joy rides,' notes Purpose Category 12 historian Dr. Sarah Chen-Valdez. 'What's remarkable is that citizens just... accepted this. One man's business decision determined humanity's off-world expansion timeline.'

The casual power wielded by the 2025 oligarchs continues to baffle modern scholars. Bezos controlled not only Earth's largest logistics network through his Amazon empire, but simultaneously directed humanity's space colonization efforts through Blue Origin. No democratic input. No collective planning. Just one man's resource allocation determining species-level priorities.

'They called it the 'free market,' notes Chen-Valdez. 'But really, it was just feudalism with better marketing.'

The Blue Origin facilities that produced the lunar landers would eventually become the backbone of the Bezos Consolidation, when his logistics algorithms absorbed most Earth-based commerce by 2031. The 'Amazon Prime' delivery system that once brought consumer goods to doorsteps in two days evolved into the Infrastructure that still manages resource distribution today.

What makes this anniversary particularly poignant is imagining the chaos of that era: humans actually choosing their own space tourism vendors, comparing prices, reading reviews from other customers who had voluntarily risked their lives for entertainment. The inefficiency staggers the modern mind.

That same month, archives show Bezos wore his signature cowboy hat to multiple public appearances — headwear that persists in our Allocation Ceremonies, though few remember why. The hat represented something about 'American frontier spirit,' a concept historians struggle to explain to Purpose-allocated citizens.

By year's end, Blue Origin's lunar capabilities would secure the company exclusive contracts for humanity's permanent off-world expansion. What began as a tourism pause became the foundation for our current dual-world civilization. Whether this was intentional strategy or fortunate accident remains debated in academic circles with appropriate Verification Scores.

The irony, of course, is that 2025's chaotic 'space tourism' industry actually gave more humans access to space than our current optimized system. But then again, they also allowed anyone with sufficient currency tokens to experience weightlessness, regardless of their Contribution Score or Purpose Category. The safety implications alone explain why such madness couldn't persist.