The money behind the global online retailing giant Amazon is looking to add space to its logistics portfolio.

A company called "Blue Origin" gave NASA a white paper detailing its goal of establishing a cargo storage facility on the moon by the middle of the next decade.  Blue Origin is owned Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.  The story about the new cargo space race was first revealed in the Washington Post, also owned by Mr. Bezos.

Blue Origin's first client is Europe's Eutelsat, which will pay Bezos' company to lift a new telecommunications satellite into orbit.  If this is successful, it will turn the company from a personal hobby of Bezos to a serious competitor with SpaceX, owned by another tech-obsessed billionaire, Elon Musk. 

The idea is to adapt the Amazon to create a shipping service that would deliver goods, such as scientific equipment and general cargo, to the moon to eventually allow humans to establish a settlement there.  Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other international commercial space companies are also competing with the tech entrepreneurs for business and government customers in a possible future moon shot - a risky venture of high costs and no guarantee of success or even of enough clients willing to grow on the moon.  But the Amazon founder is undeterred.

"It is time for America to return to the Moon - this time to stay," said Bezos.  "A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective.  I sense a lot of people are excited about this."

And he's already looking beyond the moon - In an earlier appearance at the Aviation Week awards ceremony, Bezos noted that the moon could be key in helping humans reach further into space:  "I think that if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily," he said.