We all know of SpaceX owner and ambitious entrepreneur Elon Musk’s plans to conquer Mars, but those familiar with his work know he also wants to revolutionise human travel down here on Earth. Not content with his Tesla electric cars or the fledgeling Hyperloop tube mass-transit system, Musk is eying a replacement for aeroplanes.
Specifically, Musk thinks his SpaceX rockets can be repurposed for terrestrial travel. In fact, he claims a rocket journey from London to New York would take just 29 minutes. In addition, other city-to-city rocket journeys would take no longer than an hour. All for the price of a full-fare economy aeroplane ticket.
BFR will take you anywhere on Earth in less than 60 mins https://t.co/HWt9BZ1FI9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2017
City-to-City Rocket Travel
Musk unveiled his grand vision at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) conference in Adelaide, Australia. He declared:
“If you build a ship that is capable of going to Mars, well what if you take that same ship and go from one place to another on Earth. We looked at that. And the results are quite interesting.”
BFR Rockets
BFR is capable of transporting satellites to orbit, crew and cargo to the @Space_Station and completing missions to the Moon and Mars. pic.twitter.com/p9staho4VZ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2017
Musk explained his intent to use BFR rockets, the same models he plans to send to Mars (via BBC News):
“Most of what people consider to be long-distance trips could be completed in less than half-an-hour.
Some of our customers are conservative and they want to see the BFR fly several times before they’re comfortable launching [on it].
So what we plan to do is to build ahead and have a stock of Falcon 9 and Dragon vehicles, so that customers can be comfortable if they want to use the old rocket, the old spacecraft – they can do that because we’ll have a bunch in stock.
But all of our resources will then turn to building BFR.”
Musk offers no estimate as to when his terrestrial rocket technology will become a reality.
