Fun fact: The founder of Orbital Bridge LLC, Jared Freedman, went to Miami Palmetto Senior High School, at the same time as Jeff Bezos. Yes, that Jeff Bezos. He was a Senior and Jared was a Sophomore. Jared only had the occasion to speak with Jeff a couple of times, both certainly inconsequential to him, but one of the conversations had a big impact on Jared. Jeff had just given a presentation to the Gifted Program students, in what was most likely a prep for his valedictorian speech in front of the whole school, a week or two later. By Jared’s recollection, Jeff spoke of the need for an ark in space, so all of “eggs” of humanity wouldn’t be in a single basket. Existential threat, and the means to hedge against it, was what Jared took away from it. After his talk, Jared approached Jeff and thanked him for his presentation and asked him what games he played. Jeff looked at Jared curiously and responded that he didn’t have time for games. Jared, however, being a sophomore, had plenty of time for games, and explained that his premise of an ark in space was also the premise for an obscure roleplaying game called “Metamorphosis Alpha”, but something goes wrong on the ark, and after many generations, the inhabitants don’t even understand they are on a giant spaceship. Jeff’s response was something along the lines of “Oh, Sci-fi. Interesting.” . . . and that was that.
Jeff’s idea of actually doing something about making a space ark, is one of the motivating factors that caused Jared to give Orbital Bridge a go.
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