Leave it to Elon Musk to surprise us with radical transportation ideas. The SpaceX founder who made it possible for rockets to be reused and made way for a new form of transportation with the Hyperloop, has now proposed another revolutionary way of commuting around planet Earth.
Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Musk detailed revised plans for his company’s mission to colonise Mars. However, what was most interesting in his presentation is the use of rockets to travel within planet Earth. Yes, Musk has proposed that people will be able to travel to any place in the world under 30 minutes at the cost of a full fare economy class ticket. Only this time, they will be hopping on to rocket ship instead of jet setting their way around on airplanes.
Musk plans to make this inter-Earth rocket travel possible using SpaceX’s upcoming BFR rocket which will carry a passenger spaceship to orbit, from where it will land at various cities in the world on floating landing pads.
Space X has also posted a video of the proposed travel showing passengers being ferried on speedboats to the rocket ship. The proposed travel speed of the spaceship is around 27,000 Km/h and the video shows travel from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes, Hong Kong to Singapore in 22 minutes, Los Angeles to Toronto in 24 minutes, Bangkok to Dubai in 27 minutes, Tokyo to Singapore in 28 minutes and so on.
Sounds pretty ambitious, but we are keen to know how Musk plans to solve the g-force problem. Astronauts undergo years of special training for rocket travel and normally experience 3gs of g-force during a rocket launch, which is three times the force of gravity normal human beings are exposed to on Earth.
Travelling on a rocket, though, is definitely something to look forward to.