The future of Blue Origin

So what happens to Blue Origin now that Jeff & Mac have split?

Technically, if the stock market continued rising, Jeff Bezos could have funded Blue Origin with $1 billion every year for the next 136 years. After the divorce, it's optimistically only 68 years. In reality, Seattle's community property law is imaginary. Most divorces end up with an equitable distribution like everyone else.

Based on non monetary contributions to the "community property" like raising kids, managing Jeff's finances, creating an anti bullying organization, Mac will take most of Blue Origin's funding. That could reduce Jeff's nest egg to just $30 billion.

The reality is either the stock market won't keep going up or $1 billion per year won't be enough to fund Blue Origin. It certainly isn't enough to buy 1000 houses anymore like it was 10 years ago. That $1 billion/year pledge was always a tenuous issue.

He certainly didn't plan on spending everything on Blue Origin. Every time he exercised his options, the stock price went down. Then, he's not free to buy anything he wants. If he doesn't invest most of his options in charities, he's gone & he's so far not keen on quitting his job for the cause of space.

The biggest impact will be Mac now owning a majority stake in Blue Origin. She could decide this space stuff is stupid & shut it down or at least slow it way down as Richard Branson did to Virgin Galactic.