Will the future of work for Gen Z include space? Tech leaders predict space work and travel could be just a decade away

But for those worried about what the future of work will look like, young professionals may need to look bigger—and even toward the sky. That’s because the same technology that may be disrupting traditional jobs could accelerate entirely new industries from space tourism to planet colonization. 

It’s a future that many billionaires, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are not just embracing but also enabling through their innovation: The most secure—and lucrative—jobs of tomorrow may not be on Earth at all.

Sam Altman: The class of 2035 will be exploring the solar system

Sam Altman is known for being CEO of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT), but he’s also joining the growing list of billionaires who are bullish about life in space. In fact, he said he believes young people a decade from now may be leaving behind career prospects on Earth in favor of the broader solar system.

“In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” Altman told video journalist Cleo Abram in 2025.

These jobs will not only enable Gen Alpha graduates to reel in sky-high salaries, but they’ll also be “feeling so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better.”

And while his predictions are bold, AI’s rapid development is increasing the speed of innovation and will help solve some of society’s biggest problems, including, he implies, how to sustain life in space.

Elon Musk: Humans on Mars as soon as 2028

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and the richest man on the planet, has single-handedly been one of most influential leaders in pushing for 21st-century space. After all, he’s the cofounder and CEO of SpaceX, which has worked hand in hand with NASA to advance space exploration.

SpaceX has had its fair share of setbacks, including in August 2025 when a Mars test rocket was delayed. However, Musk is hopeful unmanned Mars rockets will commence as soon as 2026, with the first crewed flight in 2028.

“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Musk said in 2013.

Jeff Bezos: Space will be bigger than packages

Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage as an idea for an online bookstore. Over three decades, he built it into a $2.8-trillion-plus e-commerce and data service empire, and it helped lead his net worth to over $250 billion. 

However, he expects his space technology company, Blue Origin, to eventually make him even more.

“I think it’s going to be the best business that I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” he said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit in 2024.

As a 62-year-old, that at least indicates space travel will be a mainstream reality in his lifetime. The company’s mission is focused on “a future where millions of people will live and work in space with a single-minded purpose: to restore and sustain Earth.”

The company is most known today for space tourism. In 2025, a Blue Origin rocket sent Bezos’s now-wife, Lauren Sanchez, as well as singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. 

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on September 1, 2025.

More on the future of work:

• Sam Altman says the quiet part out loud, confirming some companies are ‘AI washing’ by blaming unrelated layoffs on the technology
• Forget Big Tech: Small businesses will hire nearly 1 million grads in 2026—and some of the hottest roles are gloriously AI-proof
• Blackstone COO Jon Gray predicts ‘huge boom’ in blue-collar jobs—his own data center company is hiring 30,000 new roles